For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to become a parent. I’m not sure when the desire popped into my head, or why. All I know is that it’s been the only thing in my life that I’ve wanted for so long. When I was younger, it was just a fantasy life about being able to raise a kid. I wanted to be happy and have a family. That’s all I envisioned for my future. As I grow older, it’s still a fantasy, but the reality of it is becoming clearer to me as well. There’s a lot that goes into preparing to be a father that I never would have or could have imagined as a young boy. Thinking back over my childhood, I can remember so many activities and plans and surprises that my parents gave me. All of those took a lot of energy and time and money. Children are, to put it bluntly, expensive. In terms of both time and money. As an adult, these two things seem pretty obvious. But the exact details of how that works out or how much it costs has only recently started to become clearer to me.

Aside from the financial side of things, there’s also a lot of planning in advance that comes with wanting a child. I have to ask myself a lot more questions than I did when I was daydreaming at 14. Is the person I’m dating someone that I’d be happy raising a child with? Do we share the same parenting beliefs? What will my family culture be? I am likely going to be raising my child in Japan. How am I going to make sure Japanese is their native language while still having them learn English at a near-native level? These are just a small sample of the questions that cross my mind now. I’ve made some decisions about how I want my child’s life to look, and then in other areas I’m still uneducated and uninformed. Even so, my desire to give my potential future child a good life is one of the main driving motivators for me now. It’s one of a few motivating factors, but it is significant. More than personal happiness, guaranteeing the happiness of an imagined future person that I need to take care of. Which is weird, but I accept that about myself. To my dear readers, I ask you this: what dream or fantasy of your future drives you? What keeps you going?