Baby Motivation?

Soon, I will have a child. And sometimes I think that I am supposed to be more nervous about this fact than I actually am. Like, socially, I should worry about how a child is going to eat up all of my time and I will not get to do the things I want, or a child will consume all of my personality and I will communicate only in comments about theoretically cute things my child did. And, to be fair, these are probable outcomes for at least the first few months. But when I give the subject any thought, I actually feel like having a child might be an interesting test of my various interests.

First, if taking care of a baby eats up a lot of my time--and as I understand it, it will--I will have to use more discrimination in picking what I do with my spare time. Already, I try to restrict my spare time to specific activities I enjoy: playing a video game, reading a book, working on a story. I am not one to passively watch TV. But it is easy for me to pick the activity that requires the least energy. The mindless task is usually the winner. My hope, however--and this sounds like bodes poorly for my parenting skills--is that many of the daily childcare tasks will be my mindless tasks, and when I have to choose my hobbies more carefully to fit into my spare moments, I will pick the hobbies with the greater stimulation. No offense to video games, but they do tend to soak up a lot of down time because they require less mental energy than, say, writing a finding aid at the archive. On the other hand, changing a diaper is pretty much a rote, repetitive task: like a creepy, gross video game no one wants to play. As long as I have to play it, though, I can make it my mindless thing and save my mind for writing.

Also, a baby makes for a great captive audience. In our family plan, I will be staying home with the baby-in-question two days a week (two more days go to my mother-in-law, and one day to my wife). So for two days a week, I will be taking care of a perfect little captive audience for me to bounce story ideas off. Can the baby provide me with useful feedback? No, I doubt it. But half the point of bouncing ideas off a friend is just to hear your idea out loud and realize, "Oh, that's a terrible idea. Back to the drawing board with that one." And really, until my child learns to speak and its first word is, like, "reaver" or "necromancy," who's to know that my baby is my story consultant?

Third, kids apparently make people think about their legacies. And although I don't really think to much about what I want to leave behind, a child can be a good motivator for me to think, "Wouldn't it be cool if my child could tell his classmates about the fantasy story his pop wrote"? (Oh, that's right: my kid is calling me papa.) Or, "Hey, I'm taking our child to the H.P. Lovecraft convention next weekend!" And I have a whole new person to fill with information about the Cthulhu Mythos or tales of Conan the Cimmerian. A person, I might add, who will not have acquired the skills to politely brush me off.

So I am all over this parenting thing. Mainly because I see ways to make it benefit my nerdy self.