Today is the second time I celebrate Father’s Day. Truth be told, even though I was a father last year, I didn’t feel like one because I was dazed and confused from taking care of a young baby. It’s since been a year and I’m happy to say that on this Father’s Day, I do feel like a Dad.

Every few weeks, I hit a couple of days when I’m just in a funk. Either my energy levels dip or I feel overwhelmed. I used to think it was a problem I needed to fix. I was wrong. It’s just a normal part of being an emotionally-vulnerable human.

They say that the best things in life are free. But let’s face it, you can’t get to them if you don’t have the time. Without time, you can’t take a day off to reflect on life. That also means there’s no time for hobbies let alone, creative endeavors.

Let’s say you have a users table and a shows table. A user has_many shows and a show can have_many users. You’d need to set up a join table for this.

If I don’t write about my experiences as a father while my boy is growing up, it’s almost certain that hormones will take over and I’ll forget how I really felt. Here are some of the themes that came up.

I’ve lived through my 20s. While I can’t tell you the exact path that will lead you to your destiny, I can list several things that will prematurely trap your life. If you’re aware of these, you’ll have a better chance of avoiding them.

My kid was born and I couldn’t find baby formula in stores. It was the US baby formula shortage of 2022. Luckily, I had samples of Enfamil and Similac but they were quickly depleting.

Here’s what I learned about putting my kid to sleep and the mistakes I’ve made.

strong_migrations gem prevents large database tables from locking up when running database migrations. The drawback is that instead of running one easy Rails migration, you end up breaking up migrations into three parts.

If I had to become a first time father again, here are the essentials I’d get for my newborn. I used all the items I list here.