I have a single friend in his late 30s right now. Mega-millionaire. Doing whatever he wants. He’s happy! He always asks me “where are you going next” and I always respond “nowhere, I just want to be home with my kid.” And he looks at me like I’m CRAZY. He tries to empathize, but can’t.

I used to be him. There’s nothing wrong with being him. I’m happy for him. But kids rebalance your life to realizing that nothing matters more than them. Like nothing even comes close to mattering. Everything else becomes noise.

And I didn’t get it either. So I don’t expect other people without kids to get it either. And that’s fine. I’m not judging you. Even when I decided to have kids, I didn’t (couldn’t!) know what to expect. I wasn’t particularly excited, honestly.

But holy shit does that change once they come. I look at my life in bewilderment almost every week thinking how my 20s self would’ve hated this, and yet this is the best my life has ever been.

My kid is sleeping right now and I’m just counting down the minutes for her to wake up so we can hang out. That’s all I want.

— Mitchell Hashimoto, Twitter, 2025