Yeah for sure. Nothing is constant/static.

As they grow up, they will want to do things their way, explore things on their own. It'll be tough since I care of them so much but it's part of life: it's natural that your kids will leave you eventually (especially boys).

My interest in the field (hi-tech) is still sky-high. I'm blogging when my kids are asleep. I dislike NodeJS/JavaScript but I still learn it on the side (yeah, it's a weird relationship...). But when kids are awake, hi-tech is far from my mind.

There was an article about valuing Time because you can't purchase Time. When I'm old, I probably won't remember anything about Java or Rails or Tomcat v5.0 or Linux Mandrake but I'm pretty sure I will remember the time I spent with my kids when they were toddlers. I probably won't spend much time with them as soon as they have their own partners/family.

So I suppose I've come to realize that my time with my kids are even more limited up until they're 12-15 years old, become sparse up until they hit college, and becomes very limited once they have their own family.

PS: my kids are almost 4 y.o. and 16 mo's. They're constantly asking for attention and all I can give them right now is just that: attention. They're not asking for toys or gadgets (yet...).

> There was an article about valuing Time because you can't purchase Time. When I'm old, I probably won't remember anything about Java or Rails or Tomcat v5.0 or Linux Mandrake but I'm pretty sure I will remember the time I spent with my kids when they were toddlers. I probably won't spend much time with them as soon as they have their own partners/family.

Thanks for the reminder - its sometimes hard to remember things like that on 4 hours sleep, but it is super important.

Now, time to put down my phone and pay some attention to my little boy!

Partially, yes.

Also, don't get me wrong here we still do things that we like but hobbies are VERY different than side businesses. Side businesses have customers and commitments and demands on your time. Hobbies and interests can be worked around just about anything. I still have hobbies and interests of my own, just not time for an entire venture outside of my full time job and my interest in quitting a job to take a risk on pursuing something else is virtually non-existent because of the strain it would put on my entire family. If it was just me and my wife, we could take the risk and accept the consequences easily enough.

Something that gave me some perspective recently was my grandfather passing away at 92 years old. He retired, after spending most of his life working for the railroad, when I was about 3-4 and it struck me that I always basically knew him as a near professional level fisherman until he hit about 85 and couldn't do it anymore. Reading his obituary I found out he didn't even start fishing until post-retirement.

I realize it's not running a business, but I just found it interesting that he spent almost a full third of his life doing something different than the prior 60 years and that was the main thing that his grandchildren knew of him (in addition to his involvement with his church).

Just a perspective changer to make you realize that life is actually longer than we give it credit for despite all of the "life is short" proclamations.

That said, when my kids are both off to college I'll be 48 and will definitely be filling my time with something but at that point there's no telling where my priorities will be. It's entirely possible that I'll get more enjoyment out of community involvement than pursuit of a business venture.

Might get involved with Boy Scouts by that point. Might get involved with politics. Might get into farming or fishing. Who knows?

What I do know is that by the time I'm 48 there's a decent chance I'll have spent a little over 30 years of my life in front of a computer screen in some form or another and I'm probably not going to want to spend the next 40-50 doing the same thing (based on my family history, that's likely).