It’s probably no surprise to anyone who reads my writing or listens to my podcasts that I can tend toward melancholy. I don’t know why this is; I’ve always been this way, though, and it’s only become worse since I became a parent.

When you have your first kid, people give you lots of terrible advice. I think they do this because they have regrets. Someone recently told me that anyone who gives you advice is actually just talking to a younger version of themselves, and I think that’s true in my experience. But this leads to people telling new parents stuff like “oh, better get sleep while you can” and “treasure every moment! You’ll miss this!” even as their new spawn screams all through the night and makes every second of every day a difficult and entirely new challenge. 

And look, maybe you’ll miss those days someday, but you also won’t really care to remember the hardest parts, so consider this my absolution for you, if you’re a young parent. You do not actually have to treasure every moment. Or maybe I’m just talking to a younger version of myself.

(I promise, this has something to do with sports.)

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