That isn’t to imply that I have been unable to stand upright until this moment. The title is misleading. The difference is that I am testing the concept of a standing desk, and I am blogging at it right now. With my sad sack folding banquet table desk and patio chair combination, I really couldn’t have a less ergonomic setup, so I did what the internet told me to and set up a standing desk. Okay, so I have been considering it for a while, though not very seriously, so the recent articles I read about standing versus sitting and the toll that my sedentary life  is taking on me just pushed me into action. Hopefully I don’t end up with a sore back and feet, but my normal routine gives me a sore back and numb tongue (neck muscle pressing slightly on a nerve, not a stroke. Thanks for worrying) so there’s nothing to lose.

On to other things. I was tangentially involved in a twitter-based political conflict today. You didn’t know I was on twitter? Well I didn’t tell you, but now you know. My username is @spankules. It’s pronounced like Hercules, but with spanking, which is totally misleading since I don’t involve myself in any spanking at any time, whether for correction or amusement. Anyway. A chum of mine was questioning a campaign worker about something, and asking him to give an exact number. The worker refused and things got testy.  In response to a short-tempered tweet, my chum asked the fellow if he would want his son to behave the same way in a similar situation. The worker went into a rage, mistakenly thinking his family and his parenting skills were being questioned. It’s the first time that I’ve seen a collision between someone’s political efforts and their personal life.

Doing a little research into the angry man, I found some helpful information, most importantly the fact that he has a 7 month old baby at home. I remember the lack of emotional control and rationality I had at that phase in my little dude’s life, so I suspect baby stress fueled his anger. Plus, a stressed dad is always worried about defending his  family, and he might  start to see threats where there aren’t any.I know I still feel like I’ve let the team down if someone speaks rudely to my wife  or child when I’m not around (I’m looking at you, angry rude man at No Frills!), so I can understand where the campaign worker was coming from.

It also doesn’t help that the worker is aligned with a party that has put a lot of effort into being uncommunicative and aloof. People are so desperate to get answers from the party that they get pretty…enthusiastic when somebody actually responds. And since the unlucky few party members who are still willing to be open and communicative are forced to defend their party’s fabrications and unethical actions, they probably feel like their on the bottom of  a dog pile. There’s nothing worse than being a good guy with an unscrupulous autocratic boss. But for this specific twitter conflict, everybody calmed down and apologized, so no harm done.

I think of myself as a fairly modern and well-adjusted dad, though it occurs to me that my list of ‘dad behaviours to avoid’ may be based too much on TV and unrealistic scenarios. I grew up during the sensitive 80s, and the message was that real men are now in touch with their emotions and this wasn’t the case before. But there is every chance that there were great, affectionate dads in the 50s and 60s, way more demonstrative than Ward Cleaver. The challenge is to find good, realistic role models to compare yourself to. I’d advise against comparing yourself to anyone, but that’s a part of your normal human development. Just don’t set the bar impossibly high.

Still, no matter how comfortable I am with our current family plan (the wife working and me staying home with the lad), it only takes a whisper of a hint of money troubles to tap into my well of dad guilt. As soon as the prospect of cash getting tight is mentioned, I feel like I am failing to follow one of the dad Prime Directives. (And yes, I understand ‘Prime’ implies a singular directive, mister pickypants. I’m using it in a plural sense anyway, so there.) As a manly man father, I should be earning the big paychecks and buying things for the family. Besides scaring off the ever threatening sabretooth tigers, bringing home the bacon is one of my important duties.

When this money panic sets in, it doesn’t matter that we decided as a family to try this arrangement out, and that I’m working on my writing and seeing real improvement. The man guilt is wired deep down in my perception of gender roles, and it is mighty powerful when triggered.All of the calm rationalization goes out of the window and I enter a state of paralytic guilty terror, which of course keeps me from doing anything productive, and so the shame spiral begins! The notion that I could possibly make a modest living by selling my made-up stories to internet strangers starts to sound pretty crazy and unattainable.

To be honest, I don’t want to go back to a regular job. My last one ground me down and broke my brain, and I’m not jazzed about going back. The real issue, though,  is that I want to keep spending my days with the little dude. The plan, at least in my head, was for me to stay at home with him until he heads off to kindergarten in 16 months. I will go back to some kind of lame part-time night job when we need the cash, but I really don’t want to go back full-time and give up this time at home with my highly excitable, sometimes infuriating, but always entertaining Maxwell.