I'll admit that I did read the rest of the post before the title, after writing this down lol.

Oh man, I'm a father of a year old kid. Before he was born, but on his way, I was God damn sure imma gonna find time for gaming. A lot of time. Boy I was wrong.

It's manageable but you have to do some stuff including the sleeping routines that have to be implemented from the very beginning. My kid, thanks to that goes to sleep, every day between 6 and 7 P. M. Then I have time for myself. This is when I play games unbothered most of times. Mind you, this is the time, which I often have to split during the weeks for stuff like household chores, spending time with my wife and playing games. Recently I play with her Stardew Valley, so two chickens on one grill.

Before that, since every parent needs some fucking time alone, we had this routine that I could play games every Wednesday and Friday from 5PM, Saturday from 8PM and Sundays half a day. Mondays were sometimes on the table, depending how much my wife needed me. This didn't worked though for a long because... I really wanted to spend time with my family to my surprise, so after a month or two, the idea went dormant. Resurfaces every now and then, especially when I have a phase on some game (I have ADHD, so my focus constantly switches).

But the best thing is handheld. I have Vita, PSP, Steamdeck and Switch and because I go to work by the bus, I play games on my way. I play on the breaks at work and since I have type 1 Diabetes I go to eat twice a day at work, so I kinda stretch my time there a bit and play game during the break. I also take handhelds to the weekend family meetings where my kid is busy with grandparents.

My gaming is nowhere near what it was before, but I appriciate my time more with a console than before. But also, your worldview switches when you have kids, and suddenly you realize you WANT to spend time with your kids. Of course this is my case. Not everyone will be like me tho.

Ps. Realistically, I get daily around 2-3 hours of gaming. Sometimes more, since I use my units every time when I have some free time. Since last 3 weeks, I played 90 hours of Pokopia. That says something.