When I start writing a post, I usually put something short into a google bar and grab an image for my thumbnail. Today’s picture comes from the NY Times article “Why I Won’t Be Having Kids.”

I complain about my kids quite a bit. I’ve complained to my friends. I’ve complained on this blog. Today will be no different.

My 4 year old is sick, again. He coughs at my face as I try to sleep at night. My 1 year old is teething. He peed on the sheets before bath time so we had to wash everything at 8:30pm. He got to bed an hour late and proceeded to wake up 4 times last night from teething pain.

Got no sleep and couldn’t fight off my kid’s cough. Messaged my manager with another “kids again, sorry” story. My youngest was standing in his crib smiling this morning with a giant poopy diaper. Got my eldest to school 45 minutes late. Fuck it, I’m working from home. Hell, I’m not sure I can work at all.

I scroll on Youtube cause I can’t quite muster the motivation to work yet. Classic, someone reposting Steve Jobs spouting platitudes. I click anyways and listen as I set up my remote desktop. 8 minutes in, I hear:

I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”

(…) because almost everything falls away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

As my computer whirs loudly, I sit in a vegetative (maybe meditative) state, mulling the words over. “Live every day as if it’s your last” is about as tropey a quote as one can get. But when I truly think about whether anything is more important to me than my kids, even through my disease-addled, sleepless stupor that is all their fault–something rings true in my head.

There is nothing more.

There is nothing more.

There is nothing more.