Late last year I decided to step away from the company I started in Vox Media to focus nearly 100 percent of my energy on making sure I spend as much time as possible with my two children, Maya and Alex, and my lovely wife Erika.

With the number of extraordinarily talented celebrity deaths in 2016, I’ve only become more convinced that my decision was the right one. We’ve lost so much talent this year and I recently told my wife, “God must’ve had a shortage of talented people in heaven because he’s decided to take them all this year.”

I became an oddly morbid person very early on in my life because, as I’ve mentioned many times, my Dad passed away suddenly of a heart attack when he was merely 47 years old. I’m going to be 45 this year and that moment that he left us dropped a crater in my world view, probably forever. I realized then that we’re never guaranteed a tomorrow. Hell we’re never guaranteed a next breath. Maybe that’s depressing and fatalistic, but it’s honestly helped me at times when I WANT to get upset and angry at the small stuff to snap me back to reality. I still sweat the small stuff at times but I can usually avoid the rabbit hole of negativity because my Dad died so young. Though now that I’m this age, I realize JUST how young that was.

 

Last week, my kids went back to school. My daughter entered sixth grade, which means she’s in the last year of elementary school. Next year, she heads to middle school for two years and then high school. Before I know it, she’s going to be heading to college. And likely taking my heart along with her.

My son entered first grade and it wasn’t kindergarten any more. It was an ACTUAL numbered grade. And having experienced just how quickly time has gone with my older child, I’m heartbroken by these developments. You know the eternal question about what superpower you’d like to have? “Flying, being invisible, super speed?” Yeah I wish I could control time. Or at least slow it down a little bit. You’ve heard of Tesla’s ludicrous mode where the car can hit 60 mph in like two and a half seconds? My life is on ludicrous mode.

I try really, REALLY hard not to sweat the small stuff (though I fail at this more often than I’d care to admit- thankfully my wife is good at reminding me when I’m going off the rails). I tried especially hard this past summer to savor every moment. Every board game we played. Every moment in the pool with my kids. Or driving them to a day camp. Or just relaxing and playing a video game together (this is the summer Alex and I started a Clash of Clans clan AND began playing Transformers Earth Wars together).

When I was a kid, we had at least three months off from school. We’d get out in early June and always head back AFTER Labor Day. Usually the Tuesday after Labor Day. My kids don’t get out until late June and go back in late August. Essentially they get about eight or nine weeks whereas I typically got 12. It sucks.

I distinctly remember my Mom and Dad celebrating our return to school. I remember a Staples ad where a Dad was dancing through the aisles to “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” as the kids looked miserable. I’m not that guy. I’m miserable when my kids are headed back. Yes sometimes them being home and complaining about being bored or seeing them being vegetables can be frustrating but it’s completely outweighed by being able to make them a breakfast in the morning and hanging in our pajamas and talking. Although my daughter is less and less into talking these days and more into browsing social media constantly. Guess that’s natural. But it also helps with me realize how quickly my son will become the apathetic teenager so gotta love our connection now.

Yet it seems like when I drop my kids off on that first day of school, I inevitably enter a bit of a mini-depression. The school year will go by really fast. It always does. Because there is so much running around, getting the kids ready for bed, taking them to soccer, to dance class, to ice skating that the moments of sitting and appreciating the mere presence of your kids are few and far between. Even weekends become jammed with fitting in any kind of social calendar, not to mention all Saturdays from now until mid-November will be swallowed whole by the soccer schedule.

Don’t get me wrong, school is fun too. I get to coach my son’s soccer team and volunteer in class as I did last year. I get to take him to his swim lesson. I get to take my daughter to her dance class. Yet the melancholy in the air is thick and musty. I love getting to spend quality time with my wife yet the void of the energetic kids nagging me to play Apples to Apples or me nagging them to go on a family bike ride remains.

I mean it’s why I stepped away from a daily role and I KNOW how lucky I am. I thank my lucky stars every day because I know most Dads never get to experience this luxury.

Just as with my next breath, I don’t plan to squander it. Because the older I get, the more cruel time is, refusing to let me grab the speeding bullet train and slowing it down, Superman-style. Time, it’s a bitch. Through and through.