I have the same sense of time passing that a dog does. My focus is on the present, the moment that I’m swimming through right now. If you grill me on the date and the number of years since a specific event happened, I’m going to answer you with some head-scratching and confused looks. 

So it’s strange when I realize that a significant amount of time has passed since a life-changing event. 9 years ago, my lovely wife Kristen and I exchanged our vows and started our married life together, and I’m still thrilled to be with her when I wake up every morning.

Maintaining a partnership for any length of time is a challenge. Adapting to and weathering the storms of life puts any couple under a tremendous amount of stress: events like job changes, the birth of your child, the trials and tribulation of family drama are a lot for any 2 people to deal with.

A lot of people would buckle down, handle the changes life brings to you, and call that success. But not us. We decided to push a little farther and chase the potential of who we could be. I found a surprising passion for politics and civic engagement, along with a dream of writing my first novel. Kristen discovered a drive for competition and fitness, and a love of volunteering and community. We talked, we listened, we started chasing our dreams, and our partnership grew stronger.

We’ve experienced some wonderful and inspiring moments over the last 9 years, and I can’t wait for the next one, and a million more after that. I love you, Kristen. Happy Anniversary!

 

In this case, “it” refers to opinions, though it’s up to you to decide if that’s all I’m full of. There isn’t really any topic of conversation that floats by me that I don’t have some opinion on. But over the course of the last few weeks, I think I’ve accumulated a few too many idle opinions. I’ve been progressively more irritable and combative, ready and willing to leap in and explain why people are wrong. 

The trick here is that I’m leaping in to offer my opinions in places and conversations that didn’t involve me in the first place. My contrarian impulses went into overdrive and I wanted to wade in to every current event. Luckily, I’ve been sitting on most of my argumentativeness and I think the storm is passing.  

Now that I’m more levelheaded, I’m digging around in the emotion pile and trying to sort out what triggered all of this. Surprisingly, there’s an element of attention-seeking. I wanted people to pay attention to me, I wanted them to notice that I was here, even if the attention I was receiving was negative.

That hunger for attention may have been powered by my exile from creativityland. When I write, I have the complete attention of my hypothetical future audience, and I have control of all of the conversations within the narrative itself. In the real world conversations move very quickly and old fogeys like me get cut off and interrupted before they get to the climax of their rambling and possibly irrelevant story. 

So, long story short, I need to get some writing done to empty out the braintubes. 

The VIA train took my baby away this morning, off to the Big Smoke for 2 days of conference excitement. This is the first time in 5 years that Kristen will spend a night away from the little dude. That’s right, in 5+ years, she’s never had a full 24 hours off from mom duty. Which also means that I’ve never been the sole parent in charge for more than a day.

When she first told me of the opportunity to attend the conference, I flinched a little bit. The long list of jobs and challenges that I would now be responsible for was a little bit daunting, and I started to fuss over it. Luckily, I took a step back and thought about it for a moment. I remembered how enjoyable my few recent excursions as an independent adult have been, and I realized how good this little work vacation away would be for Kristen. 

And it’ll be good for Max and me too. We’re having a couple of days of dude time, complete with Lucky Charms, Lunchables, and Lego Batman 2. I’m looking forward to spending the time with him and I know we’re going to have a fun (albeit unhealthy) couple of days.

But, to be honest, I can already feel the creeping sense of loneliness I get when I’m single parenting. The first wave of it washed over me when I dropped Max off at day camp this morning. I shouldn’t be so easily affected by it, but I’ve always been a sensitive child. 

As an aside, it just occurred to me that Kristen is going to Toronto the morning after the flash flooding there. I hope she can safely navigate the waterlogged streets and avoid the occasional swamp gator she may see on her trip.