Family

[benpetersen]

With your family, how do you fit time for yourself into the mix?

Also, what challenges have you seen that you didn't expect (job changes, life at home, etc)?

[creationix]

Oh, a two-part question!

With your family, how do you fit time for yourself into the mix?

I'm a creator/maker. I love to make things and that's what makes me happy. I don't feel a need to play lots of video games or watch sports or television (though I do enjoy playing certain sports such as swimming, biking and ultimate frisbee). Even as a kid growing up second oldest of 7 kids my home time was spent doing chores, child care and making (programming, k-nex, forts outside, etc).

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. -- Mahatma Gandhi

Now as an adult with my own kids to take care of, it's much the same. I work from home to avoid time spent in commutes. I work my 8 hours a day roughly with flexible hours. When I'm in the house, I play with kids, help with chores (wash dishes, mop floors, mow lawn, etc.), child care involves things like helping little ones get ready for bed, studying scriptures together, reading them bedtime stories, singing to them, playing songs on the uke or guitar for them. It's all very challenging and rewarding.

Also I honor the Sabbath day and try to focus on spiritual things on Sunday. Even if you're not religious this is incredibly refreshing. In my church I move around between various volunteer positions serving others. I've been Sunday school teacher, full-time missionary, financial clerk, primary (children's sunday schoool) teacher and currently am serving as Elders Quorum President. I regularly speak in church and teach classes. All these positions bring personal growth and satisfaction.

I work as a home-teacher which means I have a list of half a dozen families that I try to visit in their homes every month to see how they are doing personally, financially, spiritually, emotionally, etc. Yes, it takes me away from my family and takes up precious time, but somehow helping others doesn't hurt, it helps.

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. -- Jesus Christ

To me this scripture is talking less about death and more inline with the Gandhi quote above. I make time for myself by spending as much as possible serving others.

Also I'm constantly looking for ways to work on multiple things as once. For example, while mowing my 2-acre backyard I put on a pair of noise canceling headphones and listen to inspirational talks about serving and being a good person. If it weren't for the heat and allergies, it would be more relaxing personally than going to the spa.

Now back to the maker in me. I have a room in my house called the "maker room". It has microcontroller parts, a 3d printer with reels of PLA plastic in all colors. I have computers, tablets, old experimental smart phones. I go here to play and try to get the kids to join as much as possible.

I designed and built a 1024sq.ft. two-story building for fun (Also I needed to clean out my garage). it was a lot of work and took a lot of time, but as usual, the work kept me going and happy.

Most nights I stay up in bed with my laptop and play around with programming. I'll write a new interpreter for a programming language I just made up or work on supporting one of my open source projects. Being able to explore freely without the practical constraints of a paid job is nice and refreshing. I don't think I could handle being a professional programmer without this time in the evening to unwind and do it my way. I publish most of it to github even though it's not documented or even finished. As a side effect, I have literally hundreds of unsupported projects on there.

The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before.

Everyone can create. You don’t need money, position, or influence in order to create something of substance or beauty.

Creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment. We develop ourselves and others when we take unorganized matter into our hands and mold it into something of beauty—and I am not talking about the process of cleaning the rooms of your teenage children. -- Dieter F. Uchtdorf (video and talk)

Also, what challenges have you seen that you didn't expect (job changes, life at home, etc)?

This is a hard question for me because I'm very adaptable (or at least feel like I am). I always expect the unexpected to use an old phrase. I've quit good jobs and moved my family to far away cities following spiritual promptings and it's always turned out for the best in the end though it's always seemed insane at the time.

Can you imagine sitting in a meeting with your boss, the CEO, who hired you to work on open source and pays your more than you ever made in your life and explaining to him that you're quitting. No, nothing is wrong with the job and you don't have a new one lined up or know where the future lies. That can be a tricky conversation. It's especially hard for me since I have strong empathy (or something) and worry a lot about how my actions hurt others even if it's the right thing for me and my family.

I'd say the biggest challenge right now that I did now expect is how to handles feelings of inadequacy at work. I've worked long and hard as well as tried my best to follow divine inspiration to reach a point in my career where I can get paid as a senior engineer working remote from a small rural town.

Growing up fairly poor (Remember I had 6 siblings and only one working parent), I've always knew that I would eventually get a good paying job since I was good at programming and I've always thought that more pay === more good. What I soon realized after I started getting senior position was that with the higher pay came higher responsibilities (naturally) and higher expectations (did see this coming for some reason).

I guess this is just your run-of-the-mill impostors syndrome, but it's really hard, much harder than I anticipated.

Also I have to be careful to not allow social media consumption to eat too much time. It is not rewarding like serving or creating and it can be very time consuming. I need to stay on top of things for my professional work and I like staying connected with my many peers who are all remote, but it's also dangerous and can waste time, energy and productivity.

Thanks for great questions! I hope the answer isn't too wordy, I tend to be that way sometimes.