Turning 43; life as a 42-year-old

| review, yearly

Better late than never. Somehow it just seems that life gets busier and busier, doesn't it?

Last year, I wrote:

I wonder what things will be like in a year, in five years, in ten years. I think things are going to be harder, not easier. I want to use this time to store up good memories and prepare for the storm. I want to keep developing relationships, playfulness, and practical life skills. I want to stay flexible and practise acceptance. There will likely be some tough decisions in my near future. It sucks, but other people have made it through before, and we can too.

The storm did come in the form of health challenges for people that I care about, and we did make it through. There were moments when I felt the weight of stress on me, but I took it slowly, dropped things that were not essential, and asked for help. It's not over, of course. There's more to come. But I think we're starting from a pretty solid foundation, and that's going to help.

Back then, I had been thinking about:

  • How can I get better at supporting A+ when she wants help and step back when she wants to try things on her own?
    • I've been taking a step back and letting her manage classwork, homework, attendance, participation, all of those things. This has been working out better for us than otherwise. Sure, there are days when I feel a bit nervous about letting her sleep in so many times in a week. But ultimately, she's going to have to be the one in charge, and it's better to figure out if she needs or wants help while the stakes are low.
  • How can I get better at managing myself so that I can enjoy the time she wants to spend with me and pounce on the opportunities to do my own things when she wants to be independent?
    • When things go smoothly, I now have a couple of hours of focus time during schooldays that I can use to code and write and draw. This makes it easier for me to enjoy spending time with the kiddo when she's out of school, because I know that I can postpone any ideas to the next day.
  • What do I really value, and what am I willing to sacrifice?
    • I'd rather help the kiddo figure out something that works well for her long term, even if it might mean dealing with other people's opinions on parenting decisions.
    • I'd rather prioritize our long-term health, even if it means figuring out different ways to be present when people are going through a hard time.
  • What's in my control? What can I influence? What's outside both?
    • The outside world has gotten even messier, but that's okay, we'll just keep plugging along. I can learn more about connecting with local communities and seeing how to help there too.

This year

2026-08-09-01 42 to 43 #yearly #review.jpeg
2026-08-09-01 42 to 43 #yearly #review.jpeg

2026-11-01-04 Life as a 42-year-old -- annual review.jpeg
2026-11-01-04 Life as a 42-year-old -- annual review.jpeg

This year, it's been satisfying seeing people grow into themselves. The kiddo is ten, as she often likes to remind me. She's figured a lot of things out. She's been enjoying gymnastics and Pokémon. Attending virtual school is still not one of her favorite things to do, but she's proud of her ability to do well. We've been talking a lot more about neurodivergence and figuring out the kinds of things that work for you. We regularly use earbuds to manage sensory overstimulation in noisy environments and lots of hugs to feel warm and cozy. I love seeing her overhearing her negotiate with her teacher for an introvert breakout room when the students are playing Gimkit because her classmates tend to yell in their excitement and she finds it a bit loud.

I started learning French because the kiddo started taking it in school, and that's been working out really well too. I love the exercise of getting my brain to do things, and I've been having a lot of fun tinkering with my tools and processes as well. My daughter and I have gotten to the point of being able to enjoy going through some of the simpler graphic novels for series that we've read so many times in English. I've also been able to go to things like Emacs Paris online, and I had four Emacs Chats in French.

This year, I had a lot of fun hanging out with the kiddo. I think we spent more time together playing together than in previous years because we've found more things that we both enjoy. We had started playing Dungeons and Dragons with her cousins, but even when they got busy, we continued with our own adventures. Now we have all these adventures we've built up around her pet owlbear. I DM for her and I also play a fighter so that someone's around to tank melee attacks. AI has been pretty handy for quickly resolving questions about rules and generating story ideas. In addition to having lots of dice at home, I can can also roll virtual dice on my phone. This lets us tell stories wherever we are, including when we're waiting in line for roller coasters. This summer, we went to Canada's Wonderland a lot. Turns out the kiddo loves coasters and other thrill rides, so that's been a great way to spend time outside.

Blog posts

I wrote fewer blog posts than last year. I want to improve my sharing workflow so that I can share more easily.

Sketches

Time

Category The other year % Last year % Diff % h/wk Diff h/wk
Discretionary - Productive 12.6 16.7 4.1 28.1 7.0
Personal 9.2 12.9 3.7 21.7 6.3
Discretionary - Family 0.3 0.8 0.5 1.3 0.8
Unpaid work 4.2 4.5 0.3 7.5 0.5
Sleep 33.4 32.4 -1.0 54.4 -1.7
Business 2.2 1.1 -1.1 1.9 -1.8
Discretionary - Play 3.0 1.3 -1.7 2.2 -2.9
A+ 35.2 30.3 -4.9 50.9 -8.1

It's almost a straightforward shift from childcare to productive time, which is mostly Emacs, and a little bit more personal care time rather than playing. My evenings and weekends still feel mostly focused on childcare. It's just that I have more weekday time for my own things. I've also been able to wake up earlier for things like sessions with my French tutor or Emacs Chats with other people.

Going forward

I finished my consulting contract lately, so it'll be interesting to see how to manage my finances when I'm living completely off savings and investments. There's a bit more paperwork because I have to go figure out adjusted cost bases, but I think I'll be able to get the hang of it. I don't think it's going to change my time allocation very much, because my consulting was down to about two hours or so a week. But now I don't have to worry about accidentally missing a message or making sure that I can figure out my old code enough to implement a request. It was nice to get to a good solid end. The client was very happy with my work, and I was very happy with how that whole thing turned out.

With my interest in practicing French and getting the hang of talking out loud, I've been playing around with speech recognition a lot more. I'm happy to find that the local speech recognition models have actually gotten pretty good. I've been experimenting a lot with speech recognition and voice commands in Emacs. I'm looking forward to exploring that this year.

I've been sharing more of those experiments through live streams. It's one of those things that it's hard to get a sense of when you're just reading it off a blog post or code. That's been going well too, because I like the kinds of conversations I have and the ideas that people share.

I also like how we've been getting more involved with safe streets advocacy in Toronto. I'd like to see what we can do to help. Even as it feels like the outside world is getting crazier and crazier, I've been lucky enough to meet a lot of people who have their head on straight and who are trying to make things better. I want to help.

We'll see how it goes. We'll see how we grow.

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You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.
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