I’m the type of person who always makes New Year’s resolutions. But this year’s different, because my wife and I are expecting our first child, which means life as I’ve known it will officially be ending, forever. So in addition to already viewing the new year as a clean slate, I now have to contend with the prospect of having to adjust to a completely new life and mindset once the baby arrives. Which, pitifully, I didn’t realize until the moment I woke up in a sweaty panic on the first of January.
Every year, my resolutions look basically the same. The list is comprised of writing goals and career goals, along with a handful of trivial yet deeply important long-term goals that I’ve harbored for decades. Since I was a little kid, I’ve aimed to accomplish various things, and each year I half-heartedly add these projects to the resolution list, hoping this’ll be the year I finally pursue these dreams. But of course nothing ever changes, because I know I have time and therefore feel no sense of urgency to take action.
Then that morning on the first of January, I realized this was no longer true.
I felt appalled with myself that I didn’t address these long-term goals when I’d had the chance. Year after year, I’d worked out of the home, spending afternoons napping and staring at the blank computer screen when instead I could have been doing what now, with a baby on the way, feels like pure fantasy. I’ve wanted to spend my days fly-fishing in the river. I’ve wanted to learn how to complete a Rubik’s Cube in under a minute. After reading the classic children’s book, Danny the Champion of the World, I wanted to make a homemade miniature hot-air balloon like the kid did in the story, using paraffin and glue and paper on a windless summer night. I wanted to take one month—just one intense month—where I practiced my shot at a pool hall to see, once and for all, if I have the ability to play at a competitive level. And for over a decade since I’d moved to the Boston area, I’ve wanted to check out this nearby mega-maze that’s cut into a gigantic cornfield several acres large. (Apparently, it can take hours to find the middle.)
I realized I was never going to be able to do any of these things, at least for 18 years, at which point I’ll be in my mid-fifties, and who the heck knows if I’ll even be interested in accomplishing these silly things anymore? My wife could tell I was down, and I admitted that I was sad that having a baby was making some of my dreams impossible. I read her my list, and to my surprise at the end she was smiling.
“Don’t you realize?” she asked. “These are all things you can do with your kid! You want to do things that all kids would love to do with their dads—this is precisely what’s going to make you a great dad! That you love doing this stuff!”
“You’re right,” I said, while instantly realizing how to turn this further to my advantage. “So you’d like it if I do all these things with our kid?”
“I would love that. I couldn’t ask for more, Dave.”
“Sweet,” I said quickly. “You can do diapers.”
—David Yoo
