The Journey begins

Since this blog is clearly to do with my life with children, I suppose my first posts should be about when children came into my life and why, because the way it happened to me is a little nuts to be honest!  But life’s journey took me to a place where I literally had to decide between a life without children and a life with children.  I was 36 years old, recently out of a failed 11 year marriage, recently retired from the military, looking into the future not knowing that a mid-life crisis was biting at my heals.
You might be asking ‘why didn’t you have children in your first marriage?’ The answer to that is that we were planning to!  But when the time was right, and when we had saved up enough money, and when we were mentally ready, all the responsible things to say.  But here is a little known factoid… “the more you think about everything you need to have children, the more likely it is that you will convince yourself not to have them!” and I don’t mean you will literally convince yourself not to have them, it’s just the more you start building up your savings the more you don’t want to give up your savings, or your toys, or your lifestyle, or your time....  So if you want a life with kids, just realize that you might as well just jump in with both feet! Ok, maybe after a little bit of saving!
Back to how I ended up with Children… After my marriage failed, and after about 9 months went by, I started feeling lonely.  It took me a while because I’m a geek at heart, so was easy back then for me to get absorbed in my computer, an easy thing for me to do that was also exacerbated by my newfound “freedom.”  But loneliness crept up on me; my circle of friends had vanished, fractured by the break-up.  They were mostly her friends anyway as mine had all moved away with the Navy or in pursuit of their dreams to various other cities.  I was sitting in my house, alone, and slowly but surely attacking a bottle of Rye more vigorously each week.   I knew I had to break out of my shell or risk becoming a drunken lonely geek, so I did.
I began with online dating services… I filled out profile after profile and tried everything they said to try.   I even went on a few “dates” but I had TERRIBLE luck with people completely misrepresenting themselves on those services.  That experience deserves a blog post of its own, so I won’t get too far into that at the moment.   I don’t know if it’s any better these days, but I’m gun shy now.   The bottom line is that at the time, online dating services weren’t for me, so I figured it was time to head out into the nightlife with all the other schmucks.  I told myself I was NOT going to meet my sole-mate there, but I also conceded to not knowing where else singles hung out!  So after a month or two of waffling, I finally went out to a local bar that was within walking distance of my house and that walk changed my life forever.

Good Old Dad - Day 1

I've decided to create this page, "Good Old Dad"  to put my journey of personal development as a parent somewhere I can reflect on. I hope by creating this page that other parents that are struggling with everyday challenges can find a resource to compare options. Do I do everything right? ya right, but I do alright by my family so I figure someone out there might want to know what i'm doing so they can make an informed decision, pick up a point or two, or at least have a laugh or two because if you can't laugh, something is terribly wrong!