Sidestrapping and Parenting Shane Labs

Developing, managing, and marketing side projects can take a lot of time. You know how hard it is to balance with your full time job – after a full day you may be putting in over 10-12 hour days – exhausting!. But what happens when you have to balance another huge time commitment, like parenting?

Yup, I’m now a parent!

I had mentioned in a couple previous posts that my wife and I are expecting. Well, our daughter is here!

This is our first child, and wow what an experience it has been. Full of ups and downs, little sleep, but much pride. She’s absolutely amazing and I find myself staring at her for hours.

Parenting changes everything

Someone had commented on a previous post predicting what would happen:

Keep in mind: A baby can change anything and there is no planning in future. But I will hope you will do your sideproject work in future. – Christian H

Well, Christian, you were right. A baby does change everything. Not only is she a gigantic time commitment but she’s also all I ever think about. Gone are the showers where genius ideas pop into my head – now I’m just rushing to clean myself as fast as I can in the 3 spare minutes I have to bathe.

Check out my typicaly daily routine, before and after having a kid:

BEFORE NOW 12am sleep change diaper, assist in breastfeeding, rock baby back to sleep 1am sleep 2am change diaper, assist in breastfeeding, rock baby back to sleep 3am sleep 4am change diaper, assist in breastfeeding, rock baby back to sleep 5am sleep 6am wake up, work on side projects change diaper, assist in breastfeeding, rock baby back to sleep 7am get ready for day get ready for day 8am work full time job work full time job 9am 10am 11am 12pm 1pm 2pm 3pm 4pm 5pm 6pm workout change diaper, assist in breastfeeding, rock baby back to sleep 7pm dinner dinner 8pm relax, tv, read change diaper, assist in breastfeeding, rock baby back to sleep 9pm sleep 10pm sleep change diaper, assist in breastfeeding, rock baby back to sleep 11pm sleep

See the difference? Only about 5 hours of sleep at night, in 1 hour blocks of time, no time to workout, and no side project time. Ouch!

What does this mean?

This means that I’m crazy tired. Any free time I get I attempt to take naps. This is hard.

Am I going to quit my side project efforts? No way – I’m just now starting to see the fruits of my labors over the last year. And in the long run my side projects may allow me to spend more time with my family in the future. But for now I will be blogging less. Any side project time I do find myself with I’m going to be focusing on developing my side projects, not writing about them. Monthly profit reports will have to wait. Sorry 🙁

How long will this last? My hope is a couple months, then I’ll be back at it with a slew of posts to fill you in on what has happened. But who knows – it may be longer, may be less. I aim to find a new schedule soon, but my relatives tell me I’ll never have a set schedule now that I have kids – things will always be changing. Hoping that’s not the case.

Thank you

Thank you for understanding. If you haven’t been here before I can’t describe it, and if you have, then you know what I’m going through. Thanks for your patience while I figure out a new balance of priorities, which at the top is my precious daughter.