I read the excerpt below from Karl Ove Knausgaard’s book “My Struggle” in a review of it by James Wood (who happens to be from Durham) in the New Yorker.  These days, I can relate.  There is so much I want to do that it is a struggle not to see the routine of everyday life, especially with my kids, as an obstacle.  I never understood why people would tell me, “Don’t work too much when the kids are little, because you’ll never get the time back…it goes so fast.”  I never wanted to work more when my wife was responsible for most of daily routine for the kids.  Now, it is a constant temptation.

Inside, it is a question of getting through the morning, the three hours of diapers that have to be changed, clothes that have to be put on, breakfast that has to be served, faces that have to be washed, hair that has to be combed and pinned up, teeth that have to be brushed, squabbles that have to be nipped in the bud, slaps that have to be averted, rompers and boots that have to be wriggled into, before I, with the collapsible double stroller in one hand and nudging the two small girls forward with the other, step into the elevator, which as often as not resounds to the noise of shoving and shouting on its descent, and into the hall where I ease them into the stroller, put on their hats and mittens and emerge onto the street already crowded with people heading for work and deliver them to the nursery ten minutes later, whereupon I have the next five hours for writing until the mandatory routines for the children resume.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/08/13/120813crbo_books_wood#ixzz2GKo6eozg