I haven’t daylogged since my second son was born. He’s 8 months old today.
8 hazy months that have blinked into oblivion, just as mercilessly fast as I knew they would-- helpless, hapless witness, that I've been. 8 months for a baby to become more boy than infant, and for the infant to pass into the limbo
we all disappear to becoming our bigger selves.
I’ll miss him. But given how little sleep I’ve gotten over those 8 months, I won’t wish him back. Now it’s all head bruises and computer cords I’ll have to tape down to save from his brutal exuberance.
I loved him less instantly than his older brother, but his crooked smile, teeth now pushing into it like little smashed tic-tacs, demands something from me that the other’s sheer beauty never asked. This one knows-- somehow even at four months shy of a single year, he instinctually knows-- that he’ll need to wield a little more cunning than charm to make his way through the world. And I love him for that for some reason. Most souls have lots of things to learn from the world. This kid clearly has something to teach it. I hope for the world’s sake he takes his tutelage easy on us. I suppose as his dad it’s somewhat my job to make sure he does.
I’d like to say I haven’t written here because I’ve been too busy writing my plays and working on bringing them to fruition. Failing that, I’d like to say I’ve been to busy at my day slaver and being a dad, and that might be closer to the truth, but the fact is: I’ve let boredom and a bit of darkness-induced depression get the best of me. I feel like February’s tossing me a faint safety line and half-heartedly offering to help pull me out, but February’s failed me before. March is more reliable, containing as it does my Lucky Week. (My Luck Week has never failed me yet.) But one counts one’s unhatched Lucky Week chickens at one’s peril, and I feel certain that unless I kick my butt now into working harder, more consistently, March will basically breeze me by like a lion for fatter lambs.
So maybe I’m putting myself on notice with this daylog: to some extent begging my good friends here to stay on me. “What are you doing, Paul? Are you working? Are you taking care of yourself and your family? No, Paul, it doesn’t matter that you live in a paint-flaking rental house. Or that you haven’t had a full-length play produced in over a year. Or that the chances against your pulling down that sweet screenwriting cash are an inverse square of Seattle’s distance from Hollywood raised to the power of years older than eighteen you’ve aged. You’re making headway, even if the wind’s in your face.”
That sort of thing.
I have some ideas. Strange ideas. The sort I’d only share with the strange sort I’ve met here. I intend to share them soon for the sake of your sharpening them.
See if I don’t.
And if I don’t, please do get on me.