People tell me that parenthood is a life-changing experience. I don’t think I doubted that, but it did not exactly change my life the way I thought it would have — at least not yet.

It is certainly tough caring for a newborn since the usual sleep/eat/poop cycle is approximately bi-hourly. I am not the type who can nap; I will wake up from a short nap feeling terrible. I cover night duties, so as a result I do not sleep until day break. If I am lucky, I get to sleep at 5 a.m.

I end up sleeping very little each day. But just being tired is not what I would call life-changing. I have certainly been through times where I slept very little. Like going to Army/BMT, the time comes and you suck it up.

Before the baby, most of my nights were spent working late, having dinner with friends, watching TV, busybody-ing on social media, etc. The arrival of baby meant I had to be home early and stay home for most parts of the evening. There’s only so much TV and social media I can feed on before I get bored, so I decided to spend my waking moments learning new things.

During my army days, I spent free time reading books/online articles or creating stuff — software, music scores, etc. I learned a lot.

So over the past month I started making a list of things I wanted to try/learn, and attempted them one by one. Baby time is great for reading or watching training videos because my hands are usually busy carrying or feeding the baby.

Some of these action items actually required money, i.e. I had to buy/pay for stuff, and that was the biggest difference from my army days when I was broke.

Money probably made some of those things easier/faster; but irregardless, I believe progress can still be made.

Social time can really dilute you. I probably learned more (apart from parenting) in the last month than I have in the entire of last year.