“Making the decision to have a child – it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ”

Elizabeth Stone

I made a conscious decision to have kids but I didn’t fathom how deeply I’d connect with them. It’s scary and awesome at that same time.

As with some things in life it’s best not to know everything before you commit or you might never do it.

It is amazing how community and being in a place for a long time creates layers of memories and support networks. The process starts from scratch every time you emigrate or move cities. Moving away from your birth town means you leave behind your child support base. Aunties, cousins and grandparents make for trusted babysitters and are a treasure chest of knowledge and advice.

Multi-generational families who all went to the same school, and have nurtured friendships and business connections over five generations have a head start on newbies. 

Grinding it out and running a stubborn, slow growth business with all the goodies like antiquated technology, high employee turnover and price sensitive customers is the school of hard knocks. You come out tougher and smarter with an appreciation for true grit.

A tour of duty in a “tough” business makes you appreciate and seek out the ‘easier’ businesses.

Most business are a shit show beneath the hood, but some business models are just plain easier than others. You realize over time that there are easy ways to make money and hard ways to make money.

People who’ve worked in a big corporate all their lives don’t get this difference. Work with people like immigrants, founders, small business owners and grinders who appreciate the difference between easy and hard.

The Poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead
In summer luxury,—he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

By John Keats