TL;DR

Adding a 3rd child to our family really threw me for a loop. I've been feeling stressed and frustrated. In 2025, I'm going to focus on my health, in all of its forms. I'm going to start with waking up earlier to have time to work on things I enjoy without taking time from my family.

2024

Overall, 2024 was a pretty good year. I had time to focus on my hobbies with my LEGO city, BrickLink store, and now Pokémon. We also had fun trips to Oregon, Northern California, and Southern Utah. I went from being a senior engineer to a staff engineer at work. And we became a family of 5.

I won't get into all the details, but this new baby has been a very difficult transition. Going from 2 kids to 3 has been hard for us. My health has declined in a lot of ways. But the last couple of weeks of 2024, I started reflecting and making some changes that seem to be helping. I want to continue. So 2025 will be The Year of Health.

The Year of Health

I want to be healthier at the end of 2025 than I am today. This is broad, and it's broad on purpose. There's a lot I would like to accomplish, and it all mostly falls under health, in its many forms—physical, mental, emotional, and if I stretch it, career, side projects, etc.

If I had to distill everything down, I am just too stressed. Stress comes from a lot of places, but being a parent to 3 kids, taking on more responsibility at work, not exercising as much as I used to, and feeling like I don't have enough time to do what I want to, certainly doesn't reduce my stress.

I'm not going to try and change everything all at once. That would most likely be a disaster. I think I will focus on one area each season or quarter. I think this will make things manageable and give me a real chance to create lasting healthy habits.

After some reflection, I think my morning routine is one area I need to focus on. I should probably focus on it first. For much of 2024, I would wake up right before or right after my kids. I would be immediately thrown into the battle of the morning routine. I'd rush to get the kids ready and off to school, go for a run, then rush back home to shower and get ready for work. This was workable with 2 kids, but not with 3. Not to be dramatic, but mornings have turned into pure chaos.

So, winter will be about healthy mornings.

The last few weeks, I have been experimenting with waking up before my kids do and accomplishing something, anything. Lately, I've been working on some app ideas. The idea is to give myself a chance to do something I want to do before all my responsibilities kick in for the day. The hope is that this will help me decompress and be better able to handle the rest of the morning routine without feeling like I need to cram more stuff in. So far, it's been working. I feel a lot better and ready when I've been awake for a while before my kids.

My current schedule is to wake up at 5:30 a.m., work on something for 45ish minutes, then exercise for 30ish minutes. I've tried exercising first, but it's a chore, so I'm not excited to do it. I can handle it better when I'm already awake. I am excited to write some code in the morning or work on an app icon or something. So doing something creative first actually helps me get out of bed. The other thing I struggle with is stopping creative work. Too many times, I'll try working on something in the morning and feel like I can't stop and just need to finish one more thing, kids wake up, come in, distract me, and I get frustrated, I rush to help get the morning routine done, we're late for school or I don't have enough time for a run, etc. Or I'll get started on something in the evening and before I know it, it's 2 a.m. So having exercise after gives me a buffer and hard stop. The exercise gives my brain a chance to relax after working on something. I want to feel "done" well before my kids are up so I'm present and helpful.

I think one thing I'm trying to accomplish with this is to slow down. Not try to fit so much in. At times, I feel almost frantic. That I need to rush to get things done because I don't know when I'll be able to do it again. This can lead to frustration when I have ideas but feel like I don't have time to work on them. I'm trying to create space for myself so I don't feel like this. By time boxing my creative time to 45ish minutes, I'm trying to develop healthy habits for side projects. I want to be able to break things down into small pieces and be okay with setting aside half-finished work or ideas and coming back to it. 3 reminders I've written down for myself as I've started this:

I'm also not committing to doing anything particular during my morning creative time. Sometimes I work on an app. Today I'm working on this post. Some days I might just want to play a game. The only rule is that it needs to be something I want to do. I think this attitude also helps me slow down. It's okay if I put a project aside for a few days to try something else. I'll be able to come back to it another morning. But I find time during the day to continue something I was doing in the morning, I'll sometimes do that too. But I like knowing I have dedicated time and don't have to squeeze things in throughout the day.

In the spirit of slowing down, I'm also trying to take showers at night when the kids are asleep so that I have one less thing to worry about in the morning. I also saw someone on Mastodon post how they were turning their podcast speed back to 1x. I'm giving that a shot too. No need for me to blast through podcasts. And I'm giving Apple Fitness+ another shot. My thought there is that it will focus me instead of trying to watch a show or listen to a podcast while exercising.

Winter feels like the best time to work on these habits. If I'm able to do this when it's dark and cold outside, I'll definitely be able to do it in the summer. A whole 3 months might be too much, but I want to make sure I have enough time to adjust as needed to really find what works for me.

I'm a little worried about how I will handle irregularities like staying up late to play games with friends, going on trips, and stuff like that. I do okay when I have a routine, but when that gets messed with...

Looking forward, I think the next season, spring, will be about nutrition. The idea being I improve what I am putting into my body and mind. But we'll see how winter goes first.