I just wrote this text to two friends (group chat) and thought to share it here. I will not edit it, I’ll just post it as was. One thing to add is that my daughter is 3 almost 4 years old. This is how I relayed an update in a text:
Personality tests I used to take revealed that I was very accomplishment based. Like more than others. And I have long pondered that. In parenting, I often look back at my time with my daughter through the lense of "what did we accomplish?" My main goal is to provide her opportunities that she may someday grab/seize! Yesterday was a rare double victory day because we had two outdoor adventures! Took her to the creek for 2 hours, wherein she leveled up to: personally desiring to actively go engage strangers! She said “I wanna see who they are.” In weeks from begging me to flee to actually wanting to play with other kids! And later in the day we had a 2nd victory. She still insists at age 3.9 to be pushed around in a stroller. And after a fun bout of her helping me plant wildflower seeds in the canyon, I got her to agree to walk (WALK!!!) to the market for a treat. This action I have imagined will be a staple of our lives here, but we can never do it because she won't walk. Well, we finally did it. She agreed to walk and then did it! We walked somewhere. Half way there I pretended to not know the way (she loves this game) and she got to tell me how to get there. Then after we got candy, Pocky, I let her pick where we sat and she picked a place. Then afterwards she invented a game where she threw white flower petals in the air pretended they were snow and sang the Frozen song" let it go" and pretended to have snow powers for like 15 min. Which was, like a very creative weird fun and interesting thing to do. Opportunity seized?!! So double victory. Triple? A good day. Mostly I don't score myself on her seizing. I score myself on opportunities presented. There is so much Entropy pulling me toward "do nothing." I guess the urgency of the speed of how fast she is growing up is the motivation to act more quickly? In terms of game theory, she is like a weird little pet tamogochi NPC. Hahaha.love is awesome!
