tomxtobin

Google Voice has a bunch of nice features, and integrates very well with Android phones, but I gave up on it after dealing with too many cases of dropped audio during calls. (I have a very low tolerance for any service, free or paid, that screws up communication with my clients.)

I ended up porting my Google Voice number to a commercial service, Toktumi:

http://www.toktumi.com/

There are some things Google Voice does better than Toktumi (particularly contact management and Android support), but Toktumi doesn't drop my calls, supports VOIP, and lets me completely block callers that withhold their Caller ID information. I've been switching over to iOS devices, and I've found the Toktumi "Line2" apps to be better than Google Voice on that platform.

I'd argue that "the most important thing in the universe" is always an utterly subjective feeling — an "illusion" — whether evoked by thoughts of oneself, one's child, or anything else. The interesting lesson is that the object of one's supreme devotion can change at all.

> I haven't met many happy 60-ish childless couples.

I'm admittedly generalizing here from what I've seen and experienced, but I suspect that you haven't met them because the childfree (i.e., those who are childless by choice) tend not to inhabit the same social circles as parents. Those who are instead childless by circumstance may well be the very image of unhappiness.

As a childfree individual, I'm amused by the euphoric claims of parents regarding the improved quality of their lives after having children. All the science seems to point in the opposite direction:

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/why-does-anyon...

I have to confess: from the outside looking in, parents resemble nothing so much as cult victims gushing with conversion stories, complete with the requisite, "It'll be so much better once you join!" It's even creepier than that, though: cults may have leaders, but parents merely have genes flipping switches. It's like we all have a brainwashing trigger implanted at birth, waiting for the right circumstance to arise. This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, though: if raising kids is extremely hard, something would have to get tweaked in the parents' minds to convince them to stick around.

(Sometimes I wonder if some aspects of my genetic "kid trigger" were co-opted by my cat. She reduces me to a babbling puddle of mush, and I'm enormously protective of her. When she nearly died, I was reduced to tears, and I made large sacrifices in time and money to save her life — and I'd cheerfully sell a kidney if that's what it took to do so again. I plan on having her cryogenically preserved if the worst happens someday. But throw myself under a bus? No — although I'd throw someone else under a bus for her.)

The hardest part of being childfree, I've found, is the realization that I don't even live on the same planet as people who are, or will be, parents. Each side looks crazy from the other. I've found it impossible to maintain a close friendship with someone once they've had kids; schedules and priorities diverge, and you become increasingly convinced that it's best to "stick to your own kind" in the first place.