Another half a year has passed, and after a few family twists and turns, I am now a full-fledged stay-at-home dad, in charge of meals, daily routines, and figuring out how to make money. The most important thing on my mind right now is waiting for my child to start kindergarten in a month.

I used to think that parenting was a hard and tedious job, but it turns out I’ve learned so much.

Maybe an outsider sees more clearly. Before, almost everything I did revolved around work, and I subconsciously viewed everything else as a distraction or an afterthought. Then I read some books that had a specific, biting critique for this: they call it being a workaholic, sacrificing your time and life to become a machine for work. What’s more ironic is that this state isn’t born from a passion for work, but from a place of escape and fear.

Stepping away from work these past six months has allowed me to think more deeply. This article has been written on and off for a long time. My thoughts are a jumble, and my writing skills are limited, but I still want to put it down as a record of what I’ve gained during this time.

1. The Most Fundamental Thing: Rebuilding Family’s Emotional Foundation. Home is Where the Heart Is

title: What Parenting Taught Me pubDate: 2025-08-18 updatedDate: 2025-08-18 author: “Daolanx” tags: [“Stay-at-Home Dad”, “Family”, “The Ultimate Question”, “My Investment Journey”] description: "" Another half a year has passed, and after a few family twists and turns, I am now a full-fledged stay-at-home dad, in charge of meals, daily routines, and figuring out how to make money. The most important thing on my mind right now is waiting for my child to start kindergarten in a month.

I used to think that parenting was a hard and tedious job, but it turns out I’ve learned so much.

Maybe an outsider sees more clearly. Before, almost everything I did revolved around work, and I subconsciously viewed everything else as a distraction or an afterthought. Then I read some books that had a specific, biting critique for this: they call it being a workaholic, sacrificing your time and life to become a machine for work. What’s more ironic is that this state isn’t born from a passion for work, but from a place of escape and fear.

Stepping away from work these past six months has allowed me to think more deeply. This article has been written on and off for a long time. My thoughts are a jumble, and my writing skills are limited, but I still want to put it down as a record of what I’ve gained during this time.

1. The Most Fundamental Thing: Rebuilding Family’s Emotional Foundation. Home is Where the Heart Is The foundation of a home is emotional and spiritual connection. To form a family, the most important thing is the spiritual bond—at a minimum, mutual trust and support. Even better, mutual appreciation and helping each other grow. These spiritual elements give you a sense of purpose and belonging when you’re tired and facing difficulties. A basic sign of a home is a place that feels safe and secure, and people who are warm and kind.

Conversely, if family members constantly fight, attack, and tear each other down, there is no spiritual foundation for a home. Even with great material support, it’s just an empty shell that can easily fall apart. It’s a shame, but principles are just principles; you only truly understand them through experience.

Parenting has also shown me the pure, unconditional trust and dependence a child has on their parents. They have no suspicion or reservation; every emotion and action is fed back to you without holding anything back. A while ago, I was driving with my child to get away from a local water contamination incident. In that moment, I suddenly felt that this—a car, a child, diapers, and a bottle—was home. It was enough for me to feel safe wandering anywhere. Nothing else mattered.

2. Solving Survival Issues: Rebuilding the Family’s Financial Foundation and Using Capital Leverage

First, there was the problem of making money. How do you eat and live without a salary?

The first few months, I was truly panicked. I felt that if I didn’t have a job, I had no income, so I started looking for work. I went through a lot. Some jobs had too much intensity; I considered them for the money, but my heart was against it, and thankfully, they didn’t work out. Some jobs seemed easy to get but might not be stable. And some looked high-paying, but the industry might be a gray area. After a few months, I felt that many jobs were like a fortress; most people break their heads to get in, only to continue the pattern of sacrificing personal space and time for a paycheck.

Since I had to be a full-time caregiver due to a family change, I simply didn’t have the regular hours for a typical job. So I decided to just “lie flat” for a while and wait until my child started kindergarten. I spent my free time reading, and that series, Rich Dad Poor Dad, opened up my financial intelligence.

As I studied the ESBI quadrant and leverage, I understood the limitations of the employee model. Although it’s a habitual way of thinking for many, it has low leverage, similar to low-risk investments. Behind the stability, you’re sacrificing profit and taking on the risk of limited personal growth. In reality, it’s not even that stable—if you stop working, your income disappears. There’s also a contradiction in career design: it assigns you a defined value and a limited scope, yet encourages you to think and act holistically, leading to an awkward situation.

Later, I started learning about investing and got into the stock market. I was lucky enough to open a bank account in Hong Kong and a brokerage account, beginning my investment journey. It was at the end of last year’s bull market, and the stocks I bought went down. I lacked risk awareness and dabbled in margin trading, options, and shorting, which resulted in a loss of tens of thousands of dollars. Thinking about how this was all my hard-earned savings, which I normally wouldn’t even spend, and how it was now gone, I couldn’t sleep for a long time. It was my darkest moment. In the end, I came to terms with it. There was no point in being sad. I had to look forward and find a solution. After getting back on the investment track, I intensified my learning. The process has been full of twists and turns, but now I have some income and am temporarily financially secure.

With the practical knowledge of finance and investing, I feel like my wealth is accumulating and my spending is decreasing. Through decluttering, high-quality consumption, and asset management, everything is slowly getting on the right track.

3.Improving Quality of Life: Reshaping the Foundation of Family Life

First, what to eat? The old answer was simple: the cafeteria or takeout. Now, I’ve started making some home-cooked meals, for a simple reason: to save money and to have more freedom and control over my health.

Where to go? I had no choice before; I’d pay high prices on weekends, get stuck in traffic, and be surrounded by crowds. Now I’m free to choose, and I’ve found that on weekdays, places are less crowded, the scenery is beautiful, and tickets are cheaper. Many places are even free and provide a better experience; the best places aren’t necessarily the most expensive or the most crowded.

What to use? I’ve started paying attention to that, too. First, I did a huge declutter and got rid of a lot of things. My life became more minimalist.

If something is used very little, even if I like it, I sell it if it doesn’t add much meaning to my life.

If something is expensive but the quality is just so-so, I replace it with a moderately priced but better-quality item for the same purpose. I focus on high quality, not just high prices.

Redundant and duplicate items that are left unused in a corner are a waste of space. My place isn’t big, so I resolutely throw them away to reclaim the space.

Then, I added more color and vibrancy to the previously “Muji” style of minimalist decor. For example, a forest painting in the living room, a mouse tissue box, a monster tablecloth on the dining table, a dinosaur toothbrush, a dog soap dish, a drawing board wall, and a photo wall. I hope these things will subconsciously add more color and warmth to my child’s life.

4. Going Beyond Physical Space: Developing Social Connections

The social relationships we typically have are often passive: family, classmates, or even workplace colleagues. The problem with them is that you have little to no choice in the matter.

Fortunately, with the development of the internet, we can use the information age to form relationships that go beyond physical space. I envision developing three types of social connections: functional, appreciation-based, and interest-based. Functional ones will be the majority, providing information, services, or social connections. The appreciation-based ones may be few, but they are crucial—connecting with people you admire and find interesting. Interest-based ones, like those formed through games, are important because people aren’t machines; we can be more human with hobbies and character.

However, developing social connections is just a method. The core is to constantly enrich yourself, continuously cultivate your personal abilities, and enhance your self-worth. This allows you to build a personal brand and social circle from the inside out. I don’t mean just making yourself a tool; you should be a flesh-and-blood person who shares work, hobbies, and life. This is the prerequisite for building diverse social connections.

What’s been interesting lately is becoming a stock shareholder in a popular forum after just half a year of investing. It’s brought some unexpected surprises and a boost in confidence. Investing was a completely new area for me, but because I wanted to make money in a more stable and effective way, I put my learning skills to work. I started actively reading books and forum posts, and diligently documented my trades and insights on the forum, primarily for my own review.

I never expected my following to grow so much over the past six months. Recently, the forum administrators contacted me to become a shareholder. They said they had been observing me for a long time and believed I had a relatively mature trading system, a stable core, and that I was consistent in my words and actions. They noted my large following and, despite my limited trading experience, saw potential for growth.

This is probably the first time I’ve been recognized in an unfamiliar field and outside of my usual social circle. I’ll admit I’ve been experimenting with some personal branding techniques on the investment forum, like writing high-quality posts and sharing my experiences, and commenting on big-name investors’ articles to get more visibility. I even got some unexpected recommendations from well-known investors, which led to a surge in followers. However, from a deeper perspective, I wasn’t doing it just to become a big shot; it was more that I genuinely wanted to do well, and I simply went with the flow and paid attention to some personal branding methods.

I also understand that to be a good shareholder or moderator, it’s not about being an isolated expert who lectures others while they just listen. It’s about bringing people together to better understand and learn about stocks and investing. Fostering a space for discussion and learning is more important than simply making statements myself.

On a deeper level, in terms of meaning, while this is just a reputation, it’s a reminder that life is a process. Where you invest your attention, that’s where your life is. That’s why I don’t want to drift aimlessly or waste my time. If I’m going to do something, I want to do it as well as I can.

5. Three Abilities and the Ultimate Question

After everything I’ve experienced in the past six months, I feel like my life hasn’t fallen apart; in fact, it seems to be moving in a better direction. It’s not just luck. I’ve realized that three abilities are at work, and they remain even when work is taken away. They are: the courage to change, the ability to learn, and a transcendent mindset.

The Courage to Change: Don’t live a passive or aimless life. Always have the courage to change things, to make your life, yourself, and the people and things around you better.

The Ability to Learn: Whether it’s investing or cooking, you can learn and put it into practice, instead of just listening to what others say. A person’s individual time and experience are limited, but you can use books and media to transcend physical space and time to gain a variety of rich experiences and knowledge.

A Transcendent Mindset: I often step out of my own life to look at and summarize it from a “third-person” perspective. This makes me think of certain philosophical concepts and sigh at how quickly time passes, which in turn allows me to see my own life more clearly.

I recently finished reading The Three-Body Problem. The line, “Give civilization to the years, not years to civilization,” deeply moved me. Behind that shock is the sadness of “lamenting the brevity of my life while admiring the endlessness of the great river.” Within the grand framework of the universe as paper and time as a pen, even a civilization is insignificant, let alone a single human life. No matter how many twists and turns, it is just a speck of dust, and everything seems meaningless.

However, the author also wrote in the novel, “We had a happy life.” Those few words, though small, are full of meaning and brilliant. The universe, time, years, civilization—these are all grand narratives, the vocabulary of the Creator. But accepting the brevity of life with dignity and grace is the human answer. Socrates’s phrase, “Know thyself,” still resonates powerfully today.

Returning to real life, I believe I need to adjust my attitude toward life, work, and investing. First, I should abandon the false ideas and distractions of professional life—the pursuit of profit, anxiety, and the culture of “involution.” I must remove the labels and the “tool-like” nature of work. I should first return to my own humanity, and become a real person with flesh and blood, with strengths, weaknesses, hobbies, and tastes. I need to have a complete and healthy personality. On that basis, I can then build my life and professional skills, develop hobbies and talents, provide services to society, exchange value, and get the compensation I deserve—no more, no less.