There isn’t time enough, my friends— / Though dawn begins, yet midnight ends— / To find the time to have love, work, and friends.
—Kenneth Koch
The prolific artist and father of two Austin Kleon was asked how he makes time for it all. “I don’t,” he said. “The artist’s life is about trade- offs.” And then he added a little rule that we should all keep with us always: Work, family, scene. Pick two.
You can party it up and hang on to a relationship, but you won’t have much time left for work.
You can grind away at your craft, be the toast of the scene, but what will that leave for your family? If you’re as committed to the work as you are to a happy home, you will have no room for anything else.
It’d be wonderful if you could have the run of all these things all the time . . . but you can’t. Being a parent is about making trade-offs, from the very second our kids enter this world: it’s their needs versus our wants. At first, it can be a shock to the system. But once we know what to say no to, and we know why, we can say yes with comfort and confidence to the things that matter. To the things that last.