Forgotten Blogs

When I started reading blogs of single parents, either adjusting to their new situation, or surviving in a difficult situation, or those more rare succeeding in getting through life being happy and having happy kids, I found them particularly comforting. The single dad blogs were less common, but I felt a kinship with people that I wouldn’t ever know. I bookmarked them, followed the writers on twitter, and checked in occasionally, trying to keep up with all the other things in my life. at the time.

I was reviewing bookmarks, and trashing bookmarks in my browser yesterday, and checked on a bunch of the blogs that I had found really interesting, and a serious number of them hadn’t been updated since the last time I was there, which sadly, has been months or more.

On some of them, I wondered what happened to the situations they were writing about. Did they resolve them? Are they still working through them? Did they reconcile with their former loved one? Or did the just get busy, and forget about writing it all down for the rest of us to commiserate with? I have a fairly active imagination, so I considered hollywood style deaths, conspiracies, and disasters, as well as the more mundane, life overtaking them.

I’m hoping that at least 1 or 2 of these former bloggers are happy, or at least less unhappy. There were some situations that seemed to me, at least, fairly dire. Not dire enough for me to actually go to the blog and check in regularly, but dire enough so that I took a minute and wondered what, if anything happened.

I watch my stats here and wonder, since they’re fairly consistent with the crawlers that “read” websites every night, if anyone actually checks in here, or has me bookmarked. I know people are following me on twitter, but I’m not entirely sure if that really means anything. I’d prefer not to leave someone hanging, wondering where I went, and what I did, but then really, I don’t do this for anyone other than myself, but at the same time, there’s something valuable in thinking that someone is finding my experience helpful in getting through their experience.

I hadn’t realized until checking the stats for this post that I started this blog a year and 19 days ago. It doesn’t feel like it was that long ago, and at the same time, it feels like forever that I tried to put my frantic world into some coherent sequence of words, so someone besides me could at least make something out of it. I look at myself today, vs. a year ago, and I pretty much have things in order, and my life is still in total disarray.

I’ve managed to make the appearance of my life seem somewhat well adjusted, or maybe people see right through that are just smile and nod at me a lot. Bills are paid, kids are fed, there’s clean clothes on their shelves. I’m still employed. I have a canoe, a sailboat, the minivan, (which is affectionately being called the dad-wagon), and I’ve done more this summer than in the last 3 combined. I’m confident that I can manage just about anything with the kids, and I have a fairly full schedule, between the day job, the home business, the kids, and friends, who are either actually having fun doing stuff with me, or have the patience and kindness of Mother Theresa.

I’ve also managed keep a blog going for more than a year. That’s an accomplishment for me, maybe for lots of people.

So where do I go from here?

School is kicking in and the kids are busy, the ex has a steady boyfriend, the lawyers, well, they’re still trying to get this all signed and taking their sweet time about it. I haven’t lost my job to the sucky economy (yet), and I have a yard full of toys, and I actually manage all of this.

So when can I be happy? What do things stop knocking the wind out of me? When does the world start to feel like it looks to me? I’m guessing that happens in such microscopic steps that I’m not going to notice it. I’ll just get up one day, in some number of days or weeks or months or years and realize that it doesn’t hurt anymore. That happiness happens and it’s not something forced, or sought out. That I can see the players in this production that is my life as what they are, and that I can get through an episode of Scrubs without wiping at my eyes.

Maybe that day, I’ll write less meandering blog posts, that make more sense. 🙂

Happy 1 year of blogging to me.