Tony Sneed's Blog

Slower is sometimes better. That statement seems counterintuitive to how we as Americans tend to think. Our outlook is geared toward ever-increasing productivity. The more things get done and the faster they get done, the better; the more time-saving appliances we have, the better; the more efficient and effective we are, the better.

But a fast-paced and productivity-oriented lifestyle is not the panacea it portends to be.

Kerrigan is now just over 5 ½ months old. Yet, for some reason, he’s never managed to sleep solid through the night. We’ve been feeding him on a average 3 – 4 hour cycle, usually whenever he wakes up from his nap. After the late evening feeing at 10 or 11 pm, he then wakes up between 2 and 3 in the morning for another feeding. Because of the predictability of his routine, we just expected him to start sleeping through the night on his own, sometime after three months. Well, it turns out that just didn’t happen, and we started racking our brains thinking about how to change the pattern.

Finally, about a week ago, Zuzana attended a seminar by Kim West, otherwise known as the “Sleep Lady.” Zuzana picked up her book, Good Night, Sleep Tight: The Sleep Lady’s Gentle Guide to Helping Your Child Go to Sleep, Stay Asleep, and Wake Up Happy. I’ve been kinda busy the past week, but I decided to start reading the book a couple days ago, and I was blown away at how closely her method dovetails with our own approach to parenting: providing an environment of structure, predictability and consistency. She advocated a flexible feeding schedule of Sleep – Feed – Play, and she warns against some of the tenets of attachment parenting, such as co-sleeping with your baby. Her main point is teaching the baby how to put himself to sleep by eliminating various techniques that can become “crutches” the baby depends on to go to sleep, especially nursing him to sleep. (Check out the Sleep Lady’s web site: http://www.sleeplady.com.)

Another benefit of a more flexible work schedule is that I’m able to be a father who is both present and actively involved in the life of his child. Rather than abdicating my parental role, leaving most of the decisions to my wife, I’m able to exercise the duty God has assigned me to be a leader of our family, to steer us in the right direction and help keep us on track.

I’ve always believed the key to success is knowledge. So I make it a habit of reading books on whatever topic I’m dealing with in my life. If I need to think about retirement, I’ll start reading books on financial planning and investing. If I’m buying or selling a house, I read about mortgages and real estate. If I want to travel somewhere, I read about where I’m going and how to get the best deal on hotels in the area. In my professional life, I’ve got about 20 books that I’ve read or am planning to read. I’m not sure how I manage to find time to read it all … I’m sort of a human vacuum cleaner when it comes to reading – I just suck it in and absorb whatever I need to learn.

Even though my official last day at Disney was April 15^th, I had a few weeks paid leave and did not have to go into work. So right now I’ve enjoyed about a month off work, which has been nice. However, I don’t really feel like I’ve been on vacation (that’ll come next week in Cancun, Mexico). It’s been more like catching up on things that fell by the wayside since the birth of our son Kerrigan. I’ve also been studying various aspects of .Net (as you can tell from my technical blog postings). And I’ve been preparing for our summer trip to Slovakia.

Even though I’ve had a lot to do these past few weeks, not having to commute to work each day has freed me up to spend more time with my wife and child. The benefit of this shift became apparent this last weekend, when Zuzana and I attended the “Weekend to Remember” marriage conference, which took place right down the street from where we live in Valencia.

Friday was my last day as an employee of the Walt Disney Company, where I worked as a Principal Programmer for just over 5 years. It was a good run for me. My first job as a traditional corporate developer. Prior to that, I worked either as an independent contractor or as a developer for a consulting company. Although it had its own difficulties and challenges, I’m glad I had the experience of working as a programmer in a large corporation like Disney. I had the opportunity to design and implement software to fit within the infrastructure of a large, multinational conglomerate, and at the same time wrote programs for a limited number of users within the Film division of the company.