Building for Someone Who's Already Here

All the responsibility I had before, I still have. What changed is the reason underneath it, and I’m still not sure I can explain it properly.

Building always felt like an abstract idea to me. You build toward something that hasn’t arrived yet. A future version of your life, a company that doesn’t exist, a self you’re supposed to grow into at some point. It’s real work aimed at an imaginary target, and most of the time that’s fine, that’s how ambition works.

Then you have a kid, and the target stops being imaginary. You’re still building for the future, but now the future is a specific person sitting in the next room. What is already my present is her future. I’m building for something that’s here, right now, and hasn’t happened yet, at the same time. I don’t have a cleaner way to say it. It’s a strange concept and I’ve stopped expecting it to get less strange.

Every year I’ve told myself this is the year, the turning-point year, the one where things happen. Everybody does this. I’m doing it again now, and honestly I believe it this time, which is exactly what I believed the last time. The difference is that the deadline isn’t mine anymore. Not long ago Flora was being born, I was leaving my parents’ house, taking on a new life and, I think, a new person. The clock on all of that runs whether or not I feel ready.

So I’ve been building a lot this year. Not because the plan got clearer. Because the person I’m building it for did.