Why a blog?

To blog, or not to blog?

The last three years of my life have been a whirlwind of change. I got married, my wife and I decided to have a kid, then we actually had said kid. I don’t always handle change well. In the eight years between graduating college and getting married, I lived in the same apartment and had the same job. I ate the same four meals, drank the same soda. I was a creature of habit, every day being pretty much the same. And I was one hundred percent okay with this.

Life is quite a bit different now. For example, between juggling my attention between an eight year old and a two month old, it took a remarkable five hours to write the above paragraph. And while having a built-in excuse to never get anything done ever again is nice, having so many major life changes in a relatively short time span is daunting when I take a step back and think about it.

The change that is messing me up the most at the moment though is also the most recent. This week, I am officially working part-time in order to stay at home with Baby Abigail while my wife is at work. Compared to getting married or having a baby, changing my work status seems a pretty minor thing. But for the past ten years-ish, no matter what happened, I was at least self-sufficient. It wasn’t always fun or easy, but I at least made enough money to keep the rent paid.

No longer though. Working part-time, I’ll at least ensure my half of the rent and bills are paid, but all the rest will be coming from my wife. Food, clothing, entertainment, all things I would normally spend my own money on, now come from someone else’s paycheck. This lack of self-sufficiency weighs on me more then being a husband or a dad, even though it is the slightest of these life changes.

Of course, instead of earning a paycheck, I’ll be taking care of a baby. Doing the whole “stay at home Dad” thing. I’m not worried about being productive or not earning my keep or anything like that. There’s just a deep, unsettling feeling about needing my own money. I could psychoanalyze myself and find some trust issues and a childhood of economic anxiety to blame, but I’d rather not.

Instead, I’d rather talk about this new baby I’m supposed to take care of. I’d like to talk about waking up and enjoying a cup of coffee instead of sprinting out the door to work. I’d like to talk about the arduous task of cleaning up baby shit, or trying to coax an incredibly tired baby to sleep, or doing anything else really.

So, a blog. A dad blog, even. I make no promises of quantity or quality of posts. I’m not super great at making blogs look nice, so don’t expect anything more than maybe a picture in the header and words underneath. In fact, it would be best if you didn’t have many expectations at all. Although if anyone has a better name than “Dad Blog,” feel free to send it my way.

Also, my wife bought the webspace, so I figured I better use it for something.