Blog

 

When Joaquín was born, I decided to start a few habits I could repeat every year to see his progress over a longer period of time. One of those habits was writing an annual birthday blog for him, where I share my experience as an entrepreneur and as a father.

This exercise has helped me a lot, because every year it pushes me to reflect on my life on a personal level, a professional level, and in my role as a dad. That last role, the most recent one in my life, is something I was never formally trained for, and where every action or inaction has huge, long term consequences. With this blog, the series reaches four entries, and here are the links to the previous ones:

• Joaquín’s first year: The Best Gift My Life as an Entrepreneur Has Given Me
• Joaquín’s second year: Dividends Aren’t Always Monetary
• Joaquín’s third year: The Art of Balancing Goals and Personal Life

I reach my fourth year of being a father with a lot of analysis, self–criticism, and reflection about how I’m doing as a dad and as a man. It’s becoming clearer and clearer how important it is not to forget who I am outside of my role as “dad” and, at the same time, to think about how to face what’s coming next. If someone is reading this and has teenagers, they’re probably thinking: “He has no idea what’s coming!”.

With this blog, I want to put into words part of that question: Why do I work? And how do I use the experience I’ve gained to open up spaces in my life that allow me to pursue other goals, in this case, being a present father. It feels especially important to think about this now that my son is old enough to start having his own spaces and more time away from me.

I also want to share how, in parallel, I see and live my professional life: how I try to find a middle point, if it even exists, in a context that often doesn’t make it easy to be present. Long working hours, screens everywhere, and a culture that sometimes rewards performance more than well being. I feel we’re not always a society that’s friendly to children, but precisely because of that, I believe that as parents we have an enormous opportunity to make a difference inside our own homes.

It’s true that the economy, technology, and even what we eat can work against us, and all of that can make the very idea of having a child (let alone two) feel intimidating for many couples. But instead of getting stuck in that fear, with this blog I want to explore how, despite that environment, we can make more conscious decisions that bring us closer to the kind of family life we want, and avoid falling, almost without noticing into self destructive dynamics for us and for our children. In my case, it’s about understanding that this professional journey of more than 15 years makes even more sense when it allows me something as simple and as huge as sitting on the floor playing Hot Wheels with my son.

With this fourth year of Joaquín’s life, I feel like a first stage is closing and another one is beginning, deeper and more challenging. It’s no longer just about being carried away by the tenderness of having a baby, but about making increasingly conscious decisions about how we want to walk alongside him, even if that demands more head, more structure and, above all, more heart.

When I reread my three previous blogs, I see topics and concepts that keep showing up and getting stronger over time: freedom, and the idea that time is our most precious resource. That second one, especially, is something I forget from time to time; I stop valuing my time as the most valuable thing I have.

Habits like this series of blogs help me remember the principles behind my decisions, which is vital for this new stage. I’ve also discovered that the hardest part of wanting to be a present father is mental. As the saying goes, “small kids, small problems; big kids, big problems”. On top of that, the different roles I play in life are starting to collide with each other, and keeping my inner compass aligned is, and will be, one of the biggest challenges on this path.

Why this title?

Why did I choose this title: “Did I Really Spend Over 15 Years Preparing Just to End Up Playing Hot Wheels?”Because many times, when I’m sitting on the floor playing with Joaquín in the middle of the day, I ask myself: Is this moment the result of all the professional effort of the last 15 years? It’s a question I’ve heard from other parents too, sometimes with a negative tone, as if ending up playing on the floor or changing diapers were somehow “less” than what they had imagined for their careers.

In my case, I’ve chosen to see it the other way around: yes, this moment is exactly the consequence of those years of work. I feel this is where I’m supposed to be and what I was preparing for, because this is where my time and experience have the greatest impact today. To me, it feels like a real reward for that whole journey: being able to focus my energy on something far more important, with deep and real consequences in my son’s life.

I also know that you can spend years working on professional projects that end up going nowhere and do nothing more than consume your lifetime. That’s why I choose to value this present, while also understanding that it’s a temporary moment in life.

Another important question that goes hand in hand with the title and that a friend asked me recently, not directly about parenthood but about being an entrepreneur, is: “So when do we actually enjoy it?” More than a complaint, for me it’s an invitation to examine where we’re living from.

Since Joaquín was born, I feel like I enjoy life in a different way: I stopped running after every professional goal and started being more intentional about where I put my time and energy.

So, when do we enjoy it? When the professional experience we’ve gained lets us organize ourselves better, work with more focus, sustain a lifestyle we like and, above all, have the mental clarity to understand that no professional achievement will fill emotional voids, but the effort to become better parents very likely will. And that’s where the real challenge appears: to do that, we have to look inward at a very deep level.

Being a good father means becoming a better man. It means reviewing, questioning, and transforming behaviors we considered “normal” our entire lives but that are, in reality, toxic, addictive, or dependent. In that process, more than perfection, what we’re really aiming for is to slowly become better people.

Projects can wait, childhood can’t

On the other hand, if we’re at least reasonably good at what we do, there will always be projects and jobs to which we can dedicate a good portion of our professional lives. The early years of our children, though, don’t come back.

This is the one “project” that can’t be repeated, not even with a second or third child, because the actions and behaviors we have with each one of them will probably have lifelong repercussions.

On this analysis I’ve based many of my decisions as a father, understanding that yes, I did spend more than 15 years preparing so that I could have more time with my son during his formative years; time that I now invest playing Hot Wheels, building puzzles, riding bikes, swimming, and so on.

I’ve been able to see firsthand how that positively impacts his development, because there are lessons and skills that no nanny, daycare, or school can give him, and that are also very hard, or very slow, to transmit after a full workday or in a Saturday or Sunday packed with commitments.

What I said above doesn’t mean I always have the energy or desire to do all those activities. I still do them, and keep doing them; sometimes I enjoy them more than others, but I ALWAYS end up with a huge sense of satisfaction afterwards, because I know it’s the right thing to do.

That feeling of satisfaction lives alongside another, more uncomfortable part: my ego plays tricks on me when I start feeling like I’m falling behind or that people my age are achieving more than I am.

I’m very aware that those thoughts are toxic towards myself and don’t help me at all—but they still show up. The challenge is to recognize them early and manage them so they don’t become a constant burden. I can’t say it’s easy, but as the saying goes, no important achievement in life is easy. From my point of view, this is the best way to live fatherhood and to invest a large part of my productive time during these years: accepting the discomfort, the tiredness, and the doubts, but choosing, again and again, to be present.

As my wife Johanna Merchán (co–founder and CFO of Press Start Evolution) wisely says, the only constant is change. Keeping that in mind, which for me is 100% true, I know this period of heavy investment in parenting is temporary: kids grow up, and I’ll have less and less time with Joaquín.

That helps me understand that I’m living an invaluable, unrepeatable moment in my life, and that, later on, I’ll have more room to take on and develop new personal projects if I want to. As I said before, there will always be another work project and, if there isn’t, I’ll create one from scratch, just like I did at the start of my career and as I continue doing today at Press Start Evolution.

And if, for whatever reason, I never make it to that stage because life had other plans, I know I’ll leave this world at peace, knowing I gave everything I had on the field for my son, a feeling I know I wouldn’t have if I left earlier, having spent most of my “dad time” on work or professional projects.

Of course, this doesn’t mean I don’t work. I do, but with different priorities. I plan my goals and my effort taking into account the actual amount of working time I have available. There are times when I manage to keep a certain stability or balance between work and family; at other times, my workload pushes that balance out of place and I end up working late into the night or very early in the morning to get everything done.

This year in particular, I had a couple of months that, on one hand, were great professionally because a lot of opportunities opened up, but on the other hand, required an extremely high effort to keep up with everything, and at times I felt like I was drifting away from Joaquín or neglecting him a bit. It didn’t feel good, and that experience is teaching me to plan better for those moments in the future, because at the same time, the financial side can’t be ignored, especially knowing that the costs of raising a child go up as they grow.

So, when do we enjoy it?

So, when do we enjoy it? I think it depends on us learning to look at life from a different perspective, where it’s not always about wanting more, but about recognizing that everything has cycles: there are seasons to work more, and seasons to enjoy the fruits of that work and the experience we’ve gained.

Otherwise, at least from my point of view, it doesn’t make much sense to live constantly overloaded, always wanting more and more, while we miss out on moments that, unlike the professional world, where there’s always another project, are unrepeatable: our children only have one childhood.

Giving our children a large part of our time, especially in their formative years, should never be seen as “less” compared to other professional projects. On the contrary, as a society we should see it as the best possible investment of time to help shape better human beings in future generations, something the world desperately needs, especially when many of the people making the most important decisions don’t always seem to have a moral compass that points towards humanity.

For that reason, I can say that yes: I did spend over 15 years preparing just to end up playing Hot Wheels.

A message for entrepreneurs

If you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve made it this far, I invite you to look at this way of life, the entrepreneurial path, as a long journey made of different cycles. In some cycles, you’ll be almost fully focused on growing your project. In others, if you choose to, you’ll be able to use the fruits of that effort to go through life stages where you focus more on personal, family or emotional matters, taking profits from your business in the form of free time, not just money.

Entrepreneurship can be a tool to live a more complete life, full of different experiences—not just a race to achieve more and more. Don’t let that race consume your life, unless you consciously want a one dimensional life in terms of how you invest your time.

Our best work happens when we’re motivated, rested, and have clear goals and a clear sense of direction. This is something I’ve learned watching Johanna’s journey.

To close, I’d like to share a piece she wrote that speaks exactly about this: how to keep your inner compass steady in the middle of life changes. You can read it here: My Story: Changing Course Without Losing Direction.

At Press Start Evolution, we don’t just develop Augmented Reality experiences and video games for education, marketing, or entertainment. We’re also committed to sharing our experiences as entrepreneurs, digital nomads, and as a team that believes in technology with purpose.

If you’d like to get in touch with us, click here.

www.pressstartevolution.com
Colombia & Uruguay