Starting over

Testing…testing…one two three….

Ok, and we’re back.

So yeah, this blog has been out of commission for several months. In fact, I don’t think I’ve posted anything for nearly five months, which is pretty amazing since I kept up a five night a week posting habit for over six years. After a period of spending most of my free time categorizing the whims of pop culture and the meandering path that is my life I just took some time off. I mean it’s not like I’ve done anything over the past few months…

Nope, I just got married, moved (to two different places) and started a new job. All in basically the same week. No challenges there at all.

Essentially the past several months of my life have been the most stressful that I have ever experienced. Basically every aspect of my daily routine was flipped upside down at once and it is only now that I am beginning to feel as though I’ve found my feet again. There were good times and bad times during that stretch and I was so busy addressing those issues that I just did not have the time or inclination to sit down and write every night. At some point in your life you realize that writing about Lindsay Lohan is not precisely the best way to spend your free time.

(That said, the fact that I timed my wedding with her being confined to house arrest may not be as coincidental as it may seem.)

But throughout all of this I have been intending to restart the blog. I haven’t had time to write and there were so many other priorities that it was placed in the back of my mind but it was always there. Writing is just a part of who I am. The sheer act of sitting down every night and writing for fifteen or twenty minutes just helps me relax. I’ve never even focused on how many people read this (or if it is written in proper English). I just like having an outlet to unload whatever is on my mind at the moment. Now that I finally feel like I have a schedule I really feel the need to start writing again.

Over the past few months, going back even before I stopped writing, I had been struggling with just what this blog is supposed to be about. When I started it in 2004 the goal was pretty simple: I was going to write about my efforts to build a social life in Kansas City while riffing on pop culture and music. And that was a blast, writing bar stories and talking about my horrible dating techniques. But then Kim came back into my life and we got engaged and are now, and I still can’t quite believe this, actually married. That part of my life, the guy sitting alone at the end of the bar sarcastically commenting on everything that crosses his path, is no longer there. And that put the blog in a strange place because I wasn’t sure what I was writing about anymore. Or to be honest, who was this EC character that was the focal point of the blog.

I’ve figured it out recently. After getting married I now really feel like an adult. It is probably sad that I am saying this at 37 but it really is true. My thinking has changed, my focus has changed and all of the little bull shit that I used to do and say now really bothers me. Not that I still don’t do it, I can still be the cynical asshole, but I’ve realized that is not who I want to be anymore. I want to be a good husband and a good guy and just be that person I’ve always wanted to be. I’m married to the woman of my dreams, someone who makes me smile just by being in the same room as her, and I want to be the man she deserves.

So that is what this blog is now going to be about. How I make that next step in my transformation: from that delayed adolescence that seems to plague Gen X males to being a full fledged adult. There will still be discussions about pop culture (such as a discussion of the 30 years of MTV tomorrow) and all of my usual tangents but that is going to be my new focus. It’s going to be a long journey and I’m still not quite sure how I will get there but I will comment on it all the same. I’ve got a co-pilot with me now, that makes all the difference in the world.