Saturday. My son walks into my office and asks if I can come play ball.

I tell him to grab his friends. I'm doing something serious for work.

The serious thing was an app I'd been building for six weeks. Nights, weekends, five hours of sleep. An idea I'd carried in my head for years, and I finally had the tools to build it. And let's be honest, I was having the time of my life in there.

His friends weren't around. So he comes back with a random question about soccer. I answer it in a way designed to make him walk away.

He's 8. He could tell.

Third time, he doesn't ask me to play anymore. He asks if he can give me a hug.

I hugged him and went back to the screen.

In the moment, it didn't feel like dismissing my son. It felt like handling a distraction.

That night.

Bedtime was my wife's turn. I asked her if I could take it.

I'd like to tell you I did it for him. So he knows I'm there, that I love him, that I'm still his dad.

That's true. But I did it for me too. I fucked up and I wanted some relief. Not to sit with it. Just to feel a little better before I fell asleep.

So I lay there with him for half an hour.

No speech. No "you know I care about you, right?" He doesn't need to hear that, and I'd be saying it for myself anyway.

I gave him the stage. Sports. Something that happened at school. A misunderstanding with one of the boys and how you handle that. The stuff he'd rather talk about with me than with his mom.

He never brought up the afternoon.

He never does. If he did, I'd get to explain. The app, the years I carried it, why it matters. I'd get my hearing.

He doesn't give me one. He talks about school and falls asleep.

And I have to respect that. He's 8. It's not his job to ask.

So no, showing up at bedtime with an explanation ready doesn't fix anything. That's me looking for relief.

What fixes it is fewer Saturdays like that one. Managing my time like a grown man. Being smarter about what I let into my schedule, especially the new, exciting stuff.

I'm not there yet.
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P.S. Usually I'm the one telling you how I do things, or how my clients are doing. This time I want to hear it from you. If you're a father building something, and you're getting it right with your kids - or you just get haunted less than I do - hit reply and tell me how. I want to learn.
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