Let's Try This Again

I've decided to try starting up my blog again.

Why? Good question. I'm not really sure, but sometimes I feel like I've got something to say and just posting short blurbs on Facebook just seems pointless. Not that a blog can't be completely pointless as well. I don't know, I guess putting yourself out there in the world with your thoughts feels like you're doing something more than annoying your friends with your rants. Or at least something different.

I just have to cut down on Facebook. Facebook was great when I first got on a few years ago. Finding long lost friends is a fantastic thing and the re-connection with some of them has not been limited to the virtual world but actual real-world reunions. So for that it has been great. But I've had the feeling for a long time that Facebook has been making me depressed. Or at least more depressed. I thought it was just me but my therapist (yes, my therapist) tells me she has a stack of literature about studies that are showing that Facebook users are more prone to depression, jealousy, and a host of other negative emotions.

I don't know why this happens, but it does. I suppose it depends on the kind of person you are (but if the early research is correct, maybe not) and in the matrix of glass-half-full vs. glass-half-empty I've always been a glass-is-full-of-piss kind of person. Everyone on Facebook leads more exciting lives than me. Whenever someone posts what they are doing I always think, "Why don't I get to do that?" Two mutual friends hang out with each other and post pictures of it, why didn't they invite me? Somebody goes on a cool trip, damn why don't I get to go there?

I also get in to weird snippy fights with people I adore. When someone post something that is just factually wrong I can't seem to help myself. Why can't people check Snopes before passing shit along? It takes like 30 seconds. People seem truly offended by the simple fact of correcting them. So maybe when friends post crazy or wrong stuff I just write about it on here. It doesn't seem like that would make it better for your friends to have their points of view attacked more publicly but it seems that people take their Facebook "walls" very personally.

I think I'm on Facebook too much. And I'm not even on as much as a lot of other people. Since I don't have a dumb phone (as I like to call them) I'm only on when I home. But it is still more than I should be.

Besides, I kind of miss blogs. I really enjoyed writing this when I was doing it a couple times a week or more and I never really cared if anyone was reading it. And there are a lot of people out there who should still be writing blogs instead of hanging out on Facebook. My friends Joe and Jose used to both write great blog posts (being people who actually write, unlike me) yet neither one does it anymore. It was always more interesting than what they write on Facebook. I think the platform does make a difference.

Something's got to give for me. I need to start looking at my life for what it is instead of what it is not. Facebook doesn't seem to help me do that, not that that is its job. Why am I jealous of other people? I take at least one overseas trip a year, this year I'll take two. I've got a beautiful smart wife and a great daughter. My wife makes enough money for us to live well. While we're not rich, we're better off than most. It afforded me the opportunity to quit my full time job and be a stay-at-home-dad which means I get to hang out with my kid more than most people in our modern society of two working parents and full time daycare/preschool. I've got great friends. That I don't see them enough is not just their fault, it is on me to make sure we are seeing each other on more than Facebook.

So what will my blog be about? I don't really know but I didn't really know when I wrote it before and that seemed to work for me. I hope it doesn't devolve to a daddy blog because there is nothing more annoying than mommy or daddy blogs. Or more pointless and boring. I hope to write about my travels because I've always wanted to do that and I love trip planning including helping other people plan trips. And of course about shit that annoys me. And stuff that thrills me.

But here's where I'm at:

A little over a year ago as I approached my 42nd birthday it seemed that I was finally in full-blown midlife crisis mode. So I started going to therapy. The whole doom and gloom of midlife was then not helped by ending up in the hospital with an irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation as it turned out) about three weeks after that birthday. That day I decided to quit my job, something my wife and I had been talking about possibly doing for a while. I didn't need any more motivation after that.

And that was supposed to make things great, but then our apartment building caught on fire. We lived in a hotel for six weeks. We had to move from our place due to our scumbag landlord's inability to return the building to livability or keep it up to fire code. Moved to a much more expensive place after just having given up my income. Had things stolen from us by either the movers, the fire-damage cleaners, or the sketchy contractor who wasn't done working on our new place by the time we moved in. Sketchy contractor and idiot heating/plumbing guy kept fucking up the air conditioner installation job, breaking it twice while hooking up the machine as we had two different heat waves.

So my stress was pretty high. My wife's stress was pretty high. Stress is not great for marriage. You might even say it's bad.

I was self medicating with alcohol. Also not good for a marriage. Or a liver.

Hopefully we have turned a corner. I'd like to think our marriage is stronger than ever. I hope she does too.

I've not always been that person who sees the good through all the shit that is happening to his life. But I need to start learning how.

Hopefully this is one small way to help make that happen.