The Future

"Am I big enough to know how small I am?" - Babyhead

I'm quite carefree on a day to day basis. I'm not one of life's great worriers. But, sometimes, something will set me off worrying, and I can lose days to the sort of thing which I have no hope of doing anything about. 

Often, the thing I worry about is The Future, which I have capitalised for dramatic effect. Quite a broad topic, and somewhat unavoidable, like the result of a sporting fixture you're hoping to watch the day after it actually happens.

This worrisome aspect of my character has been noticeably more, erm, noticeable since becoming a father. This, I suppose, is because I no longer have the luxury of being able to stop worrying at some point roughly fifty years into the future. I now have to worry for (I hope) at least eighty years. And that's if Cam doesn't do any procreation of his own. 

Part of the trouble with The Future is that there will almost certainly be people in it. People like me, people like you, people like George Osborne, people like Eric Schmidt, people like Wayne Rooney. Countless other people. Millions. Billions. Too many. Too many people milling around on this little rock; eating, drinking, pissing, shitting, sleeping, shagging, consuming, wasting, creating, destroying. 

Did you know, that if every human currently on Earth consumed its resources at the rate at which the average American consumes resources, we would require 3.7 Earths in order to not run out of stuff? Now, I've checked under the fridge (where everything I've lost eventually turns up) and there are no spare planets under there. Fortunately, we are not all Americans.

So, no problem, right?

Well, not according to this article I read yesterday: Humans 

See, it isn't just the consumption being done by existing humans we need to be concerned about. There's around 7 billion of us at the moment. Apparently we'd all physically fit on Zanzibar, although I doubt the quality of life would be up to much. But, as a species, we are DAMN GOOD at growing our population. 

Yep. High fives all round for our procreative prowess. 

As a result of our collective horizontal jogging efforts, we'll soon (within our children's lifetimes) be sharing the planet with 9,999,999,999 other humans. Hold on, is that enough digits? I'm not sure I can even count to ten billion, or if I'd have time to get there before I died. Anyway, yes. TEN BILLION people. 

So, in The Future, I just don't see that there's enough Earth to go around. Enough water. Enough food. Enough fuel. Enough space. Enough of those little paper umbrellas you used to get in cocktails. Enough spokey dokeys. Enough, honestly, of most things.

So I worry. I worry that Cam will grow up in a world where there is increasing competition for the resources we do have. That he will see massive unrest unfold around him as more and more people wake up to the idea that we can't go on as we do now. Most of all I worry that the answer to the problem of too many people does not lie in a change in how we consume, I worry that it lies in how many of us there are doing the consuming. I worry that there needs to be fewer of us, and that somewhere in The Future we will have to confront that. 

I worry that we are not big enough to know how small we are, and that we will wander headlong into a need for drastic action to reduce our number, and we'll be too busy thinking about how important we are to see it coming.

I hope, now I've written this, I can go back to not thinking about it for a while. I am a part of the problem.

Creases

Once, at the suggestion of @SAHDandproud, I didn’t bother ironing my whole shirt. I just did the front of it and kept my suit jacket on.

That was the most action my iron had seen in quite some time. Slovenliness thy name is Lewis.

I once worked with a woman who ironed EVERY item of clothing. Including socks. She also ironed her towels and tea towels. That’s weird isn’t it? Or is it normal?

Creases do not usually bother me. Why would I want to spend lots of time ironing things when they only get creased again as soon as I put them on? The time I would spend ironing can be redistributed, used for things I want to do. Like spouting inanities on Twitter, bemoaning the increased price of a Freddo bar or wondering what happened to white dog poo.

Creases in clothes I can live with. It’s the creases in Cam which I am finding concerning.

He’s a chubby little baby. His thighs are enormous. His face has a surplus of chin. At last count there were six of them, nestling under his jaw. I assume he still has the neck we used to see, but I can’t be certain he hasn’t sold it on eBay without telling us.

With chub comes creases. They’re like a free gift. Like the ones you used to get in cereal boxes. Actually, you still do get them, they’re just rubbish now.

“Free bag sealing clip in every pack”

Well, woo and hoo. I bet all the kids are swapping their bag sealing clips in the playgrounds of the nation, desperate to collect all six. That or surreptitiously throwing them in the bin, while simultaneously developing a deep seated loathing of Kelloggs.

Anyway, yes, free creases with your fat.

Trouble is, nestled within those creases is angry looking red skin, flakes of scrot and general fluffy miscellany. All things which hide away from us, quietly festering. Especially in this uncharacteristically warm weather we’re having now. I dread to think what manner of microbial beasties could be living out a life of sweaty luxury in the soft folds of my son’s blubber.

Google suggests we are not alone in having a creasy baby. Others describe similar situations for their own offspring. In bad cases the folds can apparently emit a smell similar to a strong cheese.

Ack.

Nasty.

What, I ask of you, is the solution?

Removing the creases is not it: he is too small for even the tiniest of gym equipment, and I’m pretty sure ironing a baby is likely to get me a custodial sentence.

Treatment then. Last night we applied Sudocrem to the sore looking area. Will the magic cream help, or simply act as the agar jelly to The Creature’s Petri dish? If he smells of Gorgonzola this evening I will know the answer.

As ever, your suggestions are both welcome and appreciated, thanks for reading.

Interview

I found out today that I've been shortlisted for a job.

It's a job I really want. A job doing something which I thought I would do when I left university. It's taken me very nearly eight years to actually get here. 

That's largely my own fault. I'm not the most driven of people, I tend to wait and let things come to me, rather than seek them out.

I sometimes think that makes me really stupid. Really, really stupid. Because that's not how the world works is it? People don't just come and drop opportunities in your lap, you have to go and take them. Fight people off and prove you're the one with the hunger.

When people start saying things like that, I don't really understand. That's not how my brain's wired. I'm more of a "work to live" sort than "live to work".

Still, here it is, I've managed to be in the right place at the right time. It even looks like the fact I've started a blog and spent ages on Twitter might help me out, rather than condemning me as a monumental waster of time.

I'm worried. Obviously. Does anyone ever look forward to a job interview? Maybe. One of my ex-girlfriends. On the run up to exams she used to get excited. Animated. 

"I don't understand why anyone wouldn't like exams! They're like a really fun competition! I don't know why anyone doesn't like them!"

It probably helped that she was consistently excellent in those exams. Not something I can claim. Obviously, she's pretty successful now. 

If that's the answer: find exams fun, then I'm fucked.

Exams are not fun. 

Interviews are not fun.

But I'm unusually determined this time. I am going into that interview to put myself forward in the best possible way. I will be me, but I will be the best possible version of me. I will not just sound like I know what I'm talking about, I actually WILL know what I'm talking about. I will prove that if they don't take me on they are making a mistake.

Hopefully, once it's over, I won't feel the need to unleash 140 characters of unbridled regret and fury on Twitter.

Tomorrow on the blog: baby stuff.

Don't Sweat the Small Things

I'm still pretty new to all this parenting gubbins. Five weeks isn't a long time. Not even a full summer holiday's worth of experience under my belt.

I wrote a post earlier this week about dummies. Perhaps you read it. Perhaps you were one of the many people who were kind enough to leave me a comment which would reassure me that, actually, I shouldn't worry about giving The Creature a dummy/soother/pacifier/gobstopper. If you were, I thank you. You made me feel better about the choice I'd made and I'm grateful for that.

A few people expressed the sentiment that is the title of this post. They're right. The one I took particular notice of was @tricky_customer. She has a blog which you should read: http://trickycustomer.wordpress.com/.

She doesn't sweat the small stuff, because she's got too much of the big stuff going on. I won't try to re-tell her story here, go and see it for yourself. Needless to say, theirs is an inspiring family.

It's a great piece of advice for a new parent, along with number eleven on @SAHDandproud's list over here. I am the first to admit I've found it difficult to not be drawn into the swirling melee (how can I put the correct accent on that? I can't be bothered to look it up just now) of conflicting advice and evidence surrounding parenting. It's fucking confusing.

So when your new baby, your first baby, the baby you waited what seemed like forever for, does something a bit confounding, it's easy to panic. To run through EVERY option for calming a baby down in the space of fifteen minutes. When none of it works, it's equally easy to panic again and assume there's something wrong.

There's nothing wrong. It's just that he's a baby. Babies cry. A LOT. But it's just crying. Just a small thing. So don't sweat the small things.

It's going to be my mantra for parenting from now on, because if it's not I might go actually mental.

We're getting there I think. This evening we didn't sit in, in front of some random televised shite. We tried to feel like real people for a bit, took a little walk down to the pub we used to visit every week to do a quiz. We both had a drink. A sit down and a chill out for an hour. Mrs L was wearing the baby in a wrap and he behaved beautifully. For a minute we even forgot he was there at all.

Does that make us sound awful? No, I don't think it does, but there I go again, worrying. Don't worry, I've stopped now.