Perhaps the most difficult part of fatherhood for me has been the time suck that it has been. Sure, it’s probably that we had twins and didn’t just have a singleton. I get that. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to hold back my disdain for the other new parents I see on Twitter and Facebook who are doing normal things with their lives.

I haven’t even seen Rogue One yet. Think about that.

But such is life, I wouldn’t trade my two little guys for anything in the world, even if it is exponentially more difficult to deal with twins. That’s not what I’m here to talk about though. Oh no. Instead, I’m here to talk about something absolutely magnificent that happened somewhere along the way; my kids sleep.

They sleep damnit, even if it isn’t always restful and I have to go in what feels like dozens of times a night (a dozen maybe, in reality) to put a pacifier in and soothe them, they sleep. No longer can I expect the regular disturbances throughout the night where they wake up screaming and need to be picked up, changed, fed, comforted and rocked back to sleep each and every time. This was happening at least once a night for each, always at different times, usually more than once for at least one of the kids. Probably Lennox. Yeah, Lennox.

But the best part about them sleeping is that suddenly I have time to work again. If you know me you know that I’m a workaholic, or at least I became one in the past few years. There wasn’t a day where I wouldn’t wake up, grab something to eat, then head into my office and start working. Occasionally I’d take a few days off here and there, but I am a creature of habit to a fault and this was my daily routine.

Since the kids were born that routine went into the trash. After Uproxx gave their part timers a boot my work time was whittled down to nothing. After Lori went back to work it was essentially I’d steal a few minutes here and there to throw up a post on LiverKick. That’s it. Even something simple as leaving the house and seeing other human beings became painfully difficult. The only time I’d get out would be Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays when I’d take Ichi to the vet to get fluids for his kidney disease. Think about that.

Now, I love my kids beyond how I ever imagined I could love and have greatly enjoyed watching them grow in their seven months of life, but it was starting to take a toll on my mental health. For me, writing was a way to clear my mind, to let off some steam and to keep my sanity. As soon as they were born I lost that and I steadily lost more and more of it until there was nothing left.

This is why the marvel of them sleeping has me so excited. In what has just been a little over a week of them sleeping I’ve gone back and worked on a revision that I’ve been really wanting to get to on what I suppose is my next book. As it turns out, I was incredibly close to being done with it, just needing to bang out 10,000 words, which I was able to do in a week’s time. Now I’m back at the editing stage again and it feels great knowing that I’m making progress in my work once again.

Now all I have to do is keep it up.