Two Years of “Pay Attention”
I started this blog two years ago tonight. It’s a measure of the kind of man I am that I not only started a blog on New Year’s Eve, but I continue to be available for anniversary posts.
At the time, I was still reeling from a year of massive change in my life. I was new to fatherhood, relatively new to marriage, and I’d just moved halfway across the country from the place where I’d assumed I would live the rest of my life.
In all of this, I was completely unsure of who I was and terrified of who others might think I was, so I decided to create a place where, at the very least, I could construct a persona. I wanted a place I could point to if anyone ever asked who I was. That’s how the Pay Attention blog was born.
That’s only part of the story, though. The key to my redemption lies in the other part: I wrote the first blog post with my older daughter laying across my shoulder, 11 months old and sick with a respiratory infection that kept her awake coughing half the night.
That’s a parent’s job.
Parenting isn’t the only way to become an adult, but it’s the way I finally grew up.
It wasn’t automatic. It came little by little with every bedtime story, bath time, and sleepless night. It happened when I learned to put my iPhone down and be present when we played together, and when I realized I needed to really listen when my wife talked (a skill I’m still perfecting). It happened in therapy as I dealt with the changes in my life, and it happened as I listened to friends cry because they had no children.
Most of this isn’t chronicled here, but I can see it when I look over the archives. The earliest posts are desperate to be something bigger than they are, amateurish imitations of blogs I was reading at the time. When I read the later posts, I see less of that and sense a growing confidence.
Pay Attention isn’t a diary for me. I’ll write about the last two years some day, when time gives me the perspective to make a coherent story. For now, I’ll just say that I know who I am, and I’m proud of him.
And thanks for reading. See you next year.
