The Things We Love

Jaxn vented today about balancing his professional and personal life. This is a topic that I have personal experience with. I've made the mistakes. I'm not answering Jaxn's question so much as I'm adding to the body of knowledge.

It is my humble opinion that the first problem we face is that we are hackers. What we do for living permeates our very existence. We view every situation as an opportunity to do something interesting. We also have a tendency to be rather holier-than-thou and write off approaches or ideas we think to be inferior. We don't necessarily think we are better than anyone else so much as we feel we have explored that solution set and found it to be less than optimal.

The second is that we are men. We desire to fix our woman's problems and make everything right. This is often not what they want. They simply want us to listen and understand.

Finally, we are all selfish. Very selfish. Human nature.

So take two people, roll up em, add various desires and needs (some of which MUST be conflicting), sprinkle a dash of children, and bake for a few years on medium heat with -DCLOSE_PROXIMITY, -DFINANCIAL_APPROACH_DIFFERENCES, and --enable-extreme-verbosity-at-incompatible-moments. The result is marriage.

My only real comment is that you always want more of the things you love. The part to remember is that This Too Shall Pass. When all the bitching and moaning ends there is someone who would go to the ends of the Earth to make you happy, as long as you don't ask for it. :)