Crossroad

Le sigh.

I'm still alive, and no I haven't forgotten about the blog. Believe it or not, I have about fifty unpublished posts sitting in my draft box. They just don't feel right. I'm going through a period of transition. Before you start writing me words of encouragement, let me say that I'm not depressed in the slightest. I'm just...changing.

I remember being in gym class one day when all of my friends just started cutting up. Normally, I'd be the class clown joining in with them, but on that particular day I didn't find any of our usual hijinks funny. My teacher was like a stand-in parent to me at the time, so I talked to her about it. "I don't find the usual stuff fun anymore. I feel really serious and contemplative lately." She told me that sometimes growing up happens gradually while other times it happens in leaps and bounds.

I've been in a leaps and bounds mode lately. I had a lot of life events happen close together this year. When there's extensive structural damage to a building it's often cheaper to just demolish it and rebuild. With that, however, comes the very rare (and very, very fortunate) opportunity to decide whether or not you want to rebuild exactly as it was or make something new. I'm going for the latter.

So what does any of this have to do with posting? My posts were usually about my daughter, my grandmother, my childhood or my life as a stay-at-home dad. Well, my daughter has some things going on--things for which writing would be very therapeutic for me, but it's her life. When she's older she may take issue with that level of personal stuff being online, so I deal with it on my own.

My grandmother's gone and with her passing I kinda locked away the nostalgic part of me.  It's not out of pain or anything. I just don't need nostalgia anymore like I once did. There used to be a hole in my emotional cup. I'd keep pouring in memories to fill it up, but cleaning out my grandmother's house over the course of a month somehow sealed the hole.

Now that my daughter's in school there aren't as many stories to tell. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, then you get to hear snippets of my day. We had a Bobby Flay styled throw down last week. We each made a pizza. She beat me on taste, but I won thanks to the category of "Paid for Ingredients and Utilities."

So yeah, that's pretty much what I'm up to these days.

I've posted this a million times before, but it plays in my head a lot lately:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSBt94MuNnU