Archives for February 2015

My dear Shmata Queen will yell at me if I say a day in cleveland felt like a life sentence so I won’t make any cracks about it but I will say today feels like I was drowning in stupidity and none of it was my own.

Would have been easier to deal with because I would have kicked my own ass and gotten out of my own way. There is nothing more frustrating than knowing than the reason you are covered in shadows is because you are standing in your own sunshine, but that wasn’t the situation today.

It would have been better if I could have blamed it upon the Zombie Apocalypse because zombies aren’t thinking creatures but that wasn’t the case either.

I might not be a super genius but no one is going to describe me as fucking stupid unless they want me to demonstrate the finer side of my Taurus nature. 🙂

Got a pair of Bose noise reduction headphones on my head while The Guess Who is singing No Time and I try to decompress.

The headphones were a business purchase I made last year because when you work out of the house you need to find ways to eliminate some of the chaos that kids, dogs and gardeners bring.

“There’s no time left for you, No time left for you”

When I was 25 I felt like I had an endless amount of time to use. Life felt like one giant gift that was filled with countless boxes I could open and check out.

Twenty some years later I hear the tick-tock of an internal clock and though I can’t see the end of the road I am riding on I know I am closer to it than I once was so I am more determined to focus my efforts on the people and places that mean the most to me.

I hate the idea of wasting time unless it is my choice to do so which probably helps explain why today set me off because it is the second day where I wasn’t as productive as I wanted to be.

Last night at basketball one of the guys told me I play well for a guy who is pushing forty.

It was a compliment.

He had no clue I am closer to 50 than 30. No clue that some days I wonder how long I can maintain it all. I am high energy, but I don’t have all I used to have and I wonder how much is related to stress and how much to age/mileage.

At 25 I didn’t know where I was going but now I have a pretty damn good idea which I suppose is part of the reason I am frustrated.

It is also fair to say I am intolerant now of spending more time with what doesn’t fill my heart and soul than I was then.

Today I make a point of being present in the now but I am raring to charge into my future.

69 Ways To Insult People While Having Sex Or Blogging

That is pure unadulterated linkbait.

Some people tell me that it doesn’t work but experience has proven them wrong. Posts like
Things Bloggers Say During Sex and 69 Reasons Why Fathers Make Better Lovers have been among the most heavily read here and sometimes among those that generated the most comments.

They may not always be as eloquent as Lessons for Being Human or The Silly Versus The Sublime but I had fun writing them and sometimes that is more important than being well written.

I like to read through some of these old posts to see if I am still talking about doing the same things or if I have actually gone and done them.

One of the lessons I want my children to learn is that you are not allowed to complain about things unless you are willing to do something about them.

It drives me crazy to hear people whine about what they won’t try to fix and that is part of why I read the old posts because I don’t want to be a hypocrite.

I want to look back and see that I have made progress and if it turns out I haven’t then that is on me.

The only person I can hold accountable for my life is me.

What I Want From Blogging

Sometimes I read posts other bloggers write and realize I really have become one of the cranky old men of the blogosphere.

I read about how they wish more brands worked with them and how they are jealous of other bloggers and I shake my head because I hate the drivel they put out.

Poorly written drivel about how they used weasel words to convince a brand to give them free crap they would review and or giveaway.

And then I ask myself if I am irritated because they got something I wanted or have done something I hoped to do and didn’t.

I ask myself if it is jealousy.

I ask if people would roll their eyes at my posts.

Sometimes the answer is yes.

That is why I ask myself what I want from blogging because it is how I determine if I am on the right path or not.

*****

Today I remind myself that I am getting most of what I want from blogging. I have a place where I can actively work on my writing and focus on becoming a better storyteller.

A place where I can chronicle important moments and events in my life and my children.

This is where I take stock of my life and say today it is not yet where I want it to be. But one of the nice things about the blog is it’s also a cyber yardstick so I can see where I was and how far I have come.

That future I am raring to go to is much closer than it was.

Progress feels good. Maybe I was more productive than I thought.

I have this idea that somewhere at the end of the tracks there is a place that provides sanctuary that isn’t called Terminus.

A belief that somewhere there is a magical rest stop waiting for me to find it, a place where time will stand still just long enough for me to recharge my batteries and prepare for the next stop on my journey.

My personal Rivendell (yeah I am geeking it up today) must be there but my best guess is it is going to be different than I expect but it will still work for me because I’ll make it work.

I’ll make it work because that is what is required and most of the time I am good with that. Most of the time I don’t get irritated that life refuses to cooperate with my plans for blogging and anything else.

What I Intended To Do

What I intended to do was write a post about why I want to share Twenty-Five Links That Will Make You A Better Writer/Blogger with you.

The mental image I had in my head was for a post that could have real potential instead I am stuck with a seven minute brain dump.

Seven minutes to write this post while I wait for the Auto Club to show up so that I can take my car to the shop.

Why do cars only break down when cash is tight.

That last line was rhetorical.

So instead of providing you with the amazing post I pictured in my head you get this and a couple of comments.

When Life Doesn’t Cooperate With Blogging

When life doesn’t cooperate with blogging and it kills the block of the time I had for writing I usually try to do something anyway.

I see merit in training myself to be able to produce content under virtually any circumstances and figure I might as when the opportunity arises I might as well practice.

Some people say you shouldn’t post unless it is perfect but I am not one of them. I say chase perfection but understand you’ll never catch it and that if you only publish what you think is amazing you won’t publish much.

Besides predicting what will or won’t hit can be a rough business. Sometimes the posts you think are the best don’t generate a peep and the stuff you think is fair goes gang busters.

And now I am off to the mechanic where I’ll probably find more fodder for posts and try not to go ballistic if this is more serious than I think.

The benefit of not having my kids around is they won’t interrupt or interject during conversations with the guy but that is a whole different post.

The condom broke isn’t the opening to a story about a time the condom broke because if I wanted to write a story about sex I’d share the tale of the time a bear interrupted my girlfriend and I (true story) but that is not our topic today.

Those three words come from a discussion about taglines in The Original Dad Blogger- What Is A Tagline Worth?

Flip through it and you’ll get a chance to see what taglines I considered using here and insight into the continued issue with wanting to build a bigger blog without playing the traditional reindeer blog games others do.

I suppose I could share some of those thoughts here and talk about what can happen if you never go to blog conferences or meet other bloggers in person but that is not of particular interest today so we’ll move on.

On The Outside Looking In

My teenager and I talked about what it feels like to be on the outside looking in. When he said it is how he feels sometimes I nodded my head and told him I understood because sometimes I feel that way too.

He was surprised to hear it because he figured it was something that goes away when you get older and I smiled.

“It comes and goes for me. I don’t think about it very often. If I thought about it I’d probably say sometimes it happens because we put ourselves in that situation.”

He nodded his head and listened as to me explain he and I like to do things our way and sometimes it is different from how others do it.

“When you don’t pay much attention to what everyone else is saying or doing sometimes you feel like you missed something. Maybe we did or maybe we didn’t. Bigger question to me is asking whether it matters if we did.”

I ought to add that last line to my next post about blogging.

What Kind Of Father Are You?

Every now and then I ask myself if I am the kind of father I want to be and wonder if I am the kind of father my kids need me to be.

Most of the time I answer affirmatively to the latter and no to the former.

I am a good father but I have spent so much time putting out fires and juggling chainsaws I feel like I am not giving or doing as much as I can.

The reflection in the mirror says I am being too tough on myself and I laugh. That is because I am a stubborn curmudgeon who wants straight answers to questions but not always.

Yeah, it is a contradiction.

Sometimes I want my straight answer served like piping hot black coffee and sometimes I need it to be warm enough to feel good but not burn my throat on the way down.

Sometimes a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

Ego helps and hurts.

I know what I am capable of. I know what I have been dealing with and it is fair to say I have had my hands full.

When you spend large chunks of time playing Atlas it is natural to feel spent and to want some time to do nothing but handle your own business.

It is natural to want to grab some quiet space and to work on doing things that restore your energy, that fill your heart and soul.

Except we don’t always get those quiet moments and the waves that batter the light house never stop lapping at the walls.

When it feels like you are doing the heavy lifting on your own it is easy to get lost.

Yet ego comes into play and asks why you didn’t find a way to get around and or beyond. Accountability says maybe ego is responsible for not playing nice and maybe ego should have shut up.

Accountability says nothing happens in a vacuum and maybe you share responsibility for burning down the house and juggling chainsaws one handed.

I refused to live a life where I spent all of my time wishing I could start over but never did anything about it.

You’ll find posts here where I talk about feeling trapped, miserable and or unhappy but you’ll also find posts that show I tried to change things.

And that is what I am going to continue to do.

I don’t like how things are today. I woke up last week and said out loud “this is not what I want” because I wanted my ears to hear my heart speaking what I feel.

There is going to come a day sooner than later where I wake up and know I sailed through the storms and found the calm I was looking for.

Doesn’t mean there won’t be other battles to fight because there always are but every now and then we reach the shore and if we keep our eyes open we recognize what we have earned.

Larceny, Mutiny and Insanity

Every now and then I think about changing the tagline here. I don’t know if anyone gets the sarcasm and snark in “The Original Dad Blogger” and I wonder if it just makes me sound like a bitter blogger.

Larceny, mutiny and insanity feels fun to me. Don’t know if it is quite what I am looking for either but the beauty of blogging lies in the ease with which we can change.

Wouldn’t be hard to change once, twice or even 1,983 times. Of course 1,983 times wouldn’t help me with my branding and it would require unnecessary work but it could be done if I wanted to.

The hardest part of change isn’t change, it is taking that first step.