The Time Investment

When you are a busy parent, time is elusive. If you are a typical full time worker whose hours are in the day, you get the kids from school or daycare and come home late afternoon. Before you know it, it is time for everyone to go to bed.

During the 8 months or so working on my animation project hobby, I hardly acknowledged my wife and kids. I took them for granted because I was at home and not in the office working late or not on some business trip. They were near but I was so into my hobby that they I might as well have been in the office. The only thing I had in mind was to finish the computer animated film so that I could start being a parent again.

Unless there was a software tool where I could just imagine a story so that it turn itself into a movie, I don't think I could do this again. It would be nice to just produce so that I won't have to do the grunt work but that means I would have to pay an army of animators and other staff to make the movies I want. Unfortunately, I'm not George Lucas or Steven Spielberg. By the time I retire and become able to afford to produce computer animated films I'll probably be 100 years old. Maybe I'll have nice screenplays written by then.

Even if I am not doing any animation work, there is still too much to do with my family and with work around the home. So the hobby is at the very bottom of priorities. There can never be guilt. Time not spent with the family is time that will never be regained. Invest time with you family, whoever they are.