Hi.
My name is John and I haven't written anything on here in forever. In fact, my last post is almost a year and a half ago and I was shilling for Barilla pasta. To be honest, it seems like longer than that. When I first started writing, everything was new and exciting. But then I started to realize that each year was one big cycle of events. I went from writing every day, to a couple of times a week, to a couple of times a month, to a couple of times a year, to basically a couple of times a decade.
Here are 7 reasons why it's been so long:
1. My kids aren't that young anymore.
It was easy to write about them when they were six and three, but they are OLD now. I have a high school freshman and a sixth grader and yeah there are still stories to tell about them, but you really have to dance around some issues so you don't potentially embarrass them. Just because they are getting older doesn't mean that I no longer have to parent them, I just have to be cognizant of what I share about them online. Imagine a 14 going to school and all his friends reading about him going through puberty on my blog? It's not going to happen.
2. I've found other outlets.
I'm a creative guy at heart, but my background is in video. I spent 10 years in television news before I became a stay at home dad so it's always been easier for me to tell a story visually than through the written word. I hooked up with Life of Dad and began telling stories about other fathers that I found online. Sharing other people's stories became more important than sharing my own.
3. Everyone has a parenting blog.
There are about 48,275,622 parenting blogs on the internet. There are just way too many of us competing for the same set of eyes and to be honest, none of us are really that interesting. When you think that you have something new to write about, you then realize that the topic has been written about numerous times before. So I started to slow down.
4. I went back to work.
How could I still be Daddy's in Charge if I am working now? With the kids getting older and the wife starting her own business where she primarily works from home, I was able to head back to my old job working in television news. Right now I am working a few days a week which is great because I need the flexibility in case my wife has meetings or has to travel for business. The priority right now is to see her business grow and support that as much as possible.
5. I don't read, why should I write?
I like to support my fellow dad bloggers, but I found myself not reading anything that they write. Unless it was a travel piece that interested me, the whole parenting space was just something that didn't excite me anymore. Like I said, there are millions of us and I've come to realize that there are just way too many opinions online and I didn't want to be another one that got lost in cyberspace.
6. I'm too tired.
Being a parent is exhausting and the last thing that you want to do is sit down at the computer and spend an hour writing. I used to stay up until 2:00 in the morning writing blog posts and analyzing analytics and looking back I can't believe I didn't opt for sleep instead. Or Netflix.
7. Everything is political nowadays.
I used to just tell jokes on Twitter and would occasionally appear in the Huffington Post, but now with our tweeter in chief all that has changed. Everyone is political even if you aren't trying to be. You have to pick a side now. Everything is black and white and there is no middle ground. It sucks really. Being online used to be a lifesaver for me and now it's more of a life suck than anything.
Except for Lego Dad. He has it going on.
