Call it "New Blogger's Dilemma." Many people start a blog with high hopes, yet get stuck early on because of how prominent these first posts will be in the overall mix. I've been facing this with my own here--though I have much to write about that's not related to my work at Microsoft, the question is, where to begin? What subject shall I choose? Spirituality? Politics? Science? The Arts? What do I want to stand out in my tag cloud in the early stages of this blog? It's been a hard choice, but eventually one must choose or perish, blogwise.

So I've finally chosen to start with the subject of children. With a toddler in my life (Liam is almost three), children have been a significant part of my reality in recent years. He's also a primary reason why, as I noted in my "returning to Microsoft" piece, that I'm back at Microsoft in the first place. Recently, too, some friends of mine forwarded a link to Tim Kreider's The Referendum (NY Times blogs) whose ponderances on the fates of the childless (with "an obscene amount of free time") and the child-laden (whose "next thousand Saturdays are already booked") provides much mental fodder.

In recalling my thinking on the subject from some years ago, what might have been a short blog post turned into a longer article, which is posted on my main site. The basic thesis is that the question of which life path is more valid (which is more or less what Kreidler is asking) is not about having children or not having children, but about living either path on auto-pilot versus living either path consciously. Conscious living--making clear, conscious choices based on realities larger than ego-gratification--is really the solution to the perpetual doubt of living on auto-pilot.