Consistently Inconsistent!

Wow, I must be the most inconsistent, consistent writer this paper has ever had.            I’ve been writing this column (formerly known as Look On the Bright Side, but recently column sizes changed and they had to change the name of my column which I still don’t understand why they couldn’t just make Look On the Bright Side three lines long, I mean, for crying out loud my Dad does own the stinking paper,) anyway, as I was completing this run on sentence, I have been writing this column now for over 20 years. Sometimes I have good years, and sometimes I have nearly non-existent years and everywhere in between.

I’ve tried to force myself to write 52 columns before but it just never seems to work out.

For whatever reason, I just find myself involved in too much other stuff to write.

At first it was sports in high school and hunting and fishing. Then as I went to college it was more sports and distance, but then came the days of everyone has internet and email, (yes even The Herald Advocate has email.) and that made it a little easier to send in articles for a while.

Then I met the best, most wonderful, lovely, person I’ve ever or will ever meet, my wife. To steal a line from Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for Vice President, she is the only person who takes my breath away and leaves me speechless. So many missed columns are her fault, because she is so beautiful and smart I just love to sit and listen to her all day.

After 5 years of marriage we had our first child Katherine and 11 months later our second J.T. The last 6 or 7 years of inconsistency can land on their little shoulders. I love these two people more than they will ever know. And so whenever I get a call that Daddy is needed here or there or could Daddy do this or that, writing this article gets the backseat pass pretty fast.

So now we are at a new stage in our lives. My little boy is in Kindergarten. It took all my strength not to just cry all over my keyboard. And my little princess is in 1^st grade going into college, majoring in animal husbandry, and ready to open here veterinarian office, large animal of course, with horses and cows.

That means no going home for lunch and seeing my babies. Of course I can go eat lunch with them at school everyday if I want. If I want to face the eye roll and the deep sigh of DAD! Just like I got on the first day of school when Katherine said, “Dad isn’t that enough pictures, ughhhh?!”  And when J.T. without even looking up from playing at one of his stations announced to the whole room, “Okay Dad, see ya later!”

And the kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Richards, (she was Katherine’s teacher last year) said, “Well, Dad, guess you got asked to leave.”

I forgot to mention that my wife is happily back to what she calls her second job, teaching Math at one of the area high schools. So Daddy is left to go to work and wonder how is everyone going to make it through the day without me.

This is truly a different phase of life. Everyone talks about being empty nesters and how different that feels, something my Pastor is experiencing with his youngest daughter already off to Covenant College.

I see the definite need for more communication, because there is less time to do it. More encouragement because everyone is working hard at school all day. 

So does that mean I’ll have more time to write? I doubt it. If history is any indication of the future, I seriously doubt it. I’d love to say I’ll try or whatever but I’m really don’t like liars.

So for all those faithful readers my Dad tells me I have, thanks. Thanks, for always reading even if it is months in between columns, thanks for helping me remain consistent, even when I’m really inconsistent. Here is to another 20 years, maybe by then I can come up with a new column name, because this one will be too small, because the paper will have changed back to wider columns again.

Till then, David