My first baby, Charlie, was born in March 2020 and my second, Emma, was born in Jan 2022. When COVID turned the world upside down, my wife and I are actually enjoying the silver lining that we get to work from home and save the commute time which we can use to serve our new responsibilities of being parents. We both feel constantly burnout over the last few years juggling family and work. We never really find the new balance in life where we can be happy, be good parents and advance in our career. Whenever tradeoff needs to be made, we sacrifice happiness in a heartbeat.

Around 2 weeks ago, I broke my arm in a bike accident which makes me rethink my approach to this tradeoff. Luckily, no surgery is needed but I will be in a sling for at least 5 weeks with limited mobility in my dominant arm and require physical therapy to regain mobility over a few month. This gives me a bit of time to take a step back and think about life.

Buy Time

I came to the realization that how fragile my body can be. I simply can’t afford to sacrifice happiness all the time now and assume I have infinite time in the future to enjoy the quality-of-life improvement my current sacrifice would bring. I need a new balance.

Growing up in a middle class family in China, frugality, hard work and delayed gratification are all I know. I still don’t feel very comfortable hiring nanny to take care of my kids, accountant to do my tax and mover when I need to move my furnitures since I have the ability to perform all these tasks myself and I feel lazy paying someone else to do those. I understand the concept of specialization, benefit of delegating and making space for more important things, but I just can’t easily get rid of the feeling of guilt.

However, that’s the key to regain my balance of life and I will find away to convince myself to get rid of the guilt. I should focus on more important things in life, my happiness and my family’s happiness, and be willing to pay a premium for it. Always handling 120% of the workload just can’t be the answer. I should strive for 80% of the workload across work and kids while leave 20% for myself and my wife.

I would have more time to purse my interest and passion projects. I would have more time to plan travel for my family and have date night with my wife.

Choose Optimism

With one functional arm, life is different and there are certain limitations in what I can do. I am very luckily to have my wife and my dad here to help me which makes me very grateful. I learnt to use mouse, spoon/folk and brush my teeth with my left hand. Instead of focusing what I can’t do, I choose to focus on what I can do and the positive in life. Bottle half empty, bottle half full, it’s your choice.

It can be hard but it’s important to choose optimism because it’s always the hard time when you need it the most. For me, interestingly, I am feeling more positive than before I broke my arm.

When I examine my reluctance in increasing my spending, it also strikes me that I may be unsure if I can make up for the spending. This is the mindset of scarcity I should be fighting against. Even though I have proven I can make a better future for myself and my family, deep down, I am still more worried about the worse to come.

The more I learn about the opportunities in the world, the more I feel the world is more abundant than most think. All of the more reasons to choose optimism.