The title of this article is clickbait but it’s a pretty good argument for househusbands.

(note: the article talks about “housewives.” I’m instead saying “househusbands” because:

- makes you think for a second, I guess

- makes me sound not totally backwards and reactionary when I talk about this

- also avoids the common-knowledge problem with “housewives”: the author knows she’s not totally backwards and reactionary. I know the author’s not totally backwards and reactionary. The author knows that I know she’s not totally backwards and reactionary. I know that the author knows that I know etc etc. But each of these steps we have to make sure we’re clear on; if we just avoid the term, we can stop doing all this work.

- uh and maybe if we use the term “housewives” we’re more likely to slip back into backwards and reactionary modes of thinking accidentally

- “househusbands” works as well as “housewives”

- but like I’m not gonna fight you if you say “housewives”, whatever, gosh; so long as you don’t accidentally or purposefully slip into backwards and reactionary modes of thinking)

Premise: Life today is pretty mentally taxing. Maybe if you’re a married couple, one of you staying home might help you manage the stupid taxingness of modern life.

Point 1: Life today is very mentally taxing.

There seem to be uncatalogably infinite challenges. Some recent ones include “how do I manage these stock options” (cry me a river, I know, but they can actually create more hardship than they’re worth if you’re not careful and very unlucky), “I gotta fill out this form for my therapist”, “we have to get someone to watch our cat”, “I have to pester my landlord to fix our washing machine”, “I have to pester my landlord to get someone to check on my old neighbor so he doesn’t get bedbugs again”, “I have to figure out how to get my bike to a shop so they can fix a flat tire”, etc etc.

Meanwhile I would like to do some things like cook food and see my friends sometimes. This might be more practical than it seems; if I don’t do those things then I am less able, not more, to manage all the dumb stock options and stuff.

And this is before kids!

Counterpoint: “Dan, just simplify”

Counter-counterpoint: I agree that many of these are brought on by life-as-career-tech-person-in-SF, and that kind of life is not very simple. However, it seems to be the simplest life that at-least-somewhat fulfills me right now. Other options include independent working (oof!), startupping (double oof!) and academicizing (nevermind!). None of these are simpler. My backup coffeeshop plan sounds nice, but I’d actually probably be bad at that, and once I jump off the tech-career track it’d be hard to get back on. (And being poor in the US suuucks, so I am trying to Make That Money now in order to prevent that happening.)

Point 2: you kiiinda might need a full-time (or at least part-time) house manager, or else you’ll both be exhausted all the time.

I guess this doesn’t need much explanation, but I do find Tati and me both working Monday-Friday, then doing *tasks* all Sunday, leaving much less time to refill and be myself than I’d like.

Where does this leave us? I guess in the future, especially post kids, it’d be really nice to trade off the full time career life. It’d be good to be able to say, I’m gonna work part time for a few years, and also do all the *tasks*, and that will still leave us plenty of time to be humans.

But like I said, that doesn’t feel fulfilling now! Argh. Well, hopefully that will change.

Extra rant: If I ask someone to do a thing, why is it still my responsibility to make sure they don’t just forget it forever? Argh! I don’t expect everyone to do everything that I ask, but even simply responding to my email/text with “no” would be so helpful! Ok, whatever, life is stressful.

Comments:

Adam Jaffe - Feb 5, 2019

Not a coffeeshop, but If you want to help me open a Dutch pancake house, I’d love to have you on board. Cannot guarantee profitability, however.

Dan - Feb 0, 2019

yayyy pannekoekenhuis

I hope I get to a point where I can get to a point where I’m just ok enough at the business things that I can kinda break even, and then can expand to Do Good Things with said business, I dunno