We had been planning for months to go camping on the last weekend. Still on last Friday morning, when I asked my family about it, neither of my wife nor my daughter was interested in it. Eventually we still went (even though I didn't push for it) and it was a disaster. But before going deeper, let's go back to last week.

Myself

Last week I made really great progress with my project. I worked a lot and I did enjoy it. My mind was getting into the state that the problems and solutions were lingering always in the background. On Thursday, there was an event in my son's kindergarten. And during the event, out of the blue, I realized what was the solution to one of my issues I was working on during the day. I did focus on the event, I didn't think consciously about the project, still it turned on me suddenly. Given said that, I woke up every morning, full of energy and ideas how to continue. I had to slow down countless times during the week and get my focus back on my family.

When I'm in such a mode, there is a very bad side effect: I can't sleep properly. After maximum 7, but usually 5–6 hours of sleep, I'm up and in full power. This can go on for days, but eventually it drains my batteries and I get really irritable.

Given the above, I had also decided to keep my Fridays relatively easy. No direct work, rather just summing up what has happened during the week, wrapping up everything and just preparing for the weekend. But last Friday there was a meetup in the afternoon, so I couldn't really do what I planned. I couldn't really let the steam off and get relaxed for the weekend.

My family

We hadn't had spent much leisure time together as a family in the last couple of weeks (month?). We have done things, but never really as the four of us only. There was always someone else. During the week, the kids are mostly spending their time in the school. Given this setup, the alignment between us had been getting worse and worse. We had understood less and less the needs of our kids, and our kids had been interested less and less in our desires. This manifested in various forms. For my wife and I, the most annoying that we are being completely ignored. For our kids, ... hmm... probably they interpreted everything as constant nudging.

Weather

The weather was rather bad during the weekend. It was not ideal for camping, but we had agreed before that we can go even if it's raining. We can enjoy ourselves and the nature really helps to let the steam out, to get away from the everyday stress.

The Weekend

So this was our state when my family expressed, that they don't want to do what we planned for weeks. I felt really miserable. I knew that if we had gone, it would have been a disaster, on the other hand if we had stayed it would have been also a big problem given that we didn't have anything else to do and nobody could resolve this internal conflict of not going, when we prepared for it for such a long time. Given that I was very tired, I was not able to come up with an alternative to remediate the situation.

Eventually on Saturday morning, my wife said, that yet we go! We can't stay because it would be just a wasted weekend. That time my son was super positive to go, and my daughter also said yes, even though she didn't do anything to achieve our goal. The car was almost fully packed when she was still in pyjamas, no breakfast, no nothing. They had been ignoring us on a normal level even before, but from that moment they started ignoring us completely. They didn't answer a single question or request. They demanded immediate answer that they didn't listen to. They didn't do anything.

We have arrived to the campsite, we found a nice place, the kids were playing, but whenever there should have been an interaction between us, they ignored us. Especially my daughter. She didn't come in time to have lunch, she didn't do anything to land the food in her mouth etc. After lunch, they found out to go for a short walk. During the walk the usual happened, complete ignorance. My wife managed to play a bit with my daughter whilst I was with our son, but apart from that 10 mins, nothing. On the way back we stopped at a place, and they got ice cream... no it didn't help either.

By the end of the day I was so upset that I started shouting to them, I told them that we go home and started packing things up. They started crying and that was the moment they realized that things are not going into the right direction. That we need to change and align ourselves.

On Sunday morning, my wife didn't feel well. I also felt very bad given the last day and how I argued with my kids. So we came home really early. But the kids were rather nice that day.

I don't know what I have to do to avoid things escalated to that level. I don't want to argue that much with the kids. I don't want to shout at them that they finally realize that we have to play together. Furthermore, I also need to have the energy and patience to sort things out. I know that I could have managed this weekend much better if I was not that tired. But it would have meant that I didn't make that much progress with my project. I really need to find a way to sleep well, even if it means I have to put the project aside a bit.