I'm been spending entirely too much time reading over at places like Beerinator and Facebook, the latter a modern day version of crack.
My fascination with Facebook is the sheer fact that almost everybody in the world has a profile - from the kids in my neighborhood to kids from my old neighborhood. You type in a name of someone you know and chances are they are going to have a Facebook page. Unlike MySpace where my band has had a page for years and seems to be the domain of musicians, Facebook seems to be all about personal social networking unlike LinkedIn which seems to be for the most part about business.
I digress.
What this post really is about is the simple fact of how one can go forward yet look back at the same time.
One month into working a full-time job again after seven years and I feel I can finally start to digest those years; the waves no longer crash on my mental shores everyday.
Tomorrow is Veteran's Day which means there is no school. Normally this would just been another blip on my radar screen noticed only by a closed bank here or a trip to the doctor's office there. But now there's the scramble to see who will watch the kids, the drawing of straws between my wife and I over who is going to take off work.
I remember the many trips to the doctor's office - there's nothing like going when your kids have tattooed themselves.
Two years ago this November, I went to an At-Home Dad Convention which was one of the most eye-opening and spiritually uplifting things I have done in my life. To meet guys who shared my way of life, who had been through the trauma and the trite stares; endured the bullshit and the banal existence that can come when your life swings completely in the opposite direction was good for the soul. I may have moved on but I have not and will not forget my brothers who still walk the walk and talk the talk in the fight for gender equality when it comes to raising children.
Whether you are forced into it or chose to do it, never let anybody make you feel like you can't or shouldn't be raising your own children.
It wasn't until I embraced the fact that I was a stay-at-home-dad that I was fully able to relish the role. It was shortly after the convention that I started to put being a dad, and an involved one at that, first and foremost. Although I had kept a blog for a year leading up to it, it wasn't until after going to Kansas City that I actually "came out" as a dad blogger to my friends and family. It 2005, it was weird just to say you were a blogger much less a dad blogger.
I'll admit it, sometimes being the parent at home was hell.
But sometimes, Hell ain't a bad place to be...
2 comments:
Cool post. You know, I love being a stay-at-home dad, I really do, and yet I can't say that I've 100% owned up to it in my public life.
I was lucky in that when I was home with the kids, I was also trying to do the self-employment thing. So I could always fall back on that when I started feeling the burn of strangers who acted like I was a bum. But it certainly wasn't an easy balancing act to play dad and businessman. If my wife hadn't only been working part time, one would have had to go.
I've never really "owned up" to being a dad blogger in real life, but for me it is more about catching criticism from people like my inlaws for some of the thoughts I have shared (particularly those about them).
Post a Comment