Tag: #Daughter

  • Feeling Better

    I’m feeling better today. I was able to sleep last night, so I have to admit that all of the everything that was balled up in (the anxiety, short temper, loss of interest) was completely based on the impending surgery.

    And the surgery did go well. The kid was home before lunch, and she was feisty as ever. Her eye is bloodshot, and it does itch, which drives her insane as she can’t touch it, which is the only thing she wants to do. The other funny thing was that she refused to take a nap even though she was completely exhausted. (She gets that from me.) But when she went to bed, she crashed out, lost to the world. Until 6am, when she woke us up. Yeah…

    I am the caregiver today. The wife has meetings and is in the office with the door shut, while the kid and I are on the couch watching tv and movies. Well, I’m trying to read, and clearly, I am putting together a blog post. I know that I will need to make lunch and dinner later. Then, a doctor’s appointment to make sure that the kid’s eye is healing correctly. Somewhere in there, I think we’ll take a walk with the dog.

    And though I am feeling better today, I know that I’m still not back. I can feel my anxiety at the periphery of my vision. I’m still not sure what is the best path for me to take.

    What I do know is that right now, I need to be the best dad that I can be. There is a little copy of me on the couch trying to explain the plot of “Ghost Writer,” and that’s my focus for today.

  • To Dare is to Do

    I have written about my current inability to finish reading a book. I start one, start the habit, then something happens, and I get out of the habit. This has everything to do with discipline, and my complete lack of it. Maybe I made the mistake in believing that the Pandemic would give me to opportunity to reset my life, and to create new, better habit, or at least correct things. But unemployment, remote school, and the feeling for the first two months of the pestilence that we were going to die… It made some easy things very difficult to accomplish.

    But the Pandemic is coming to an end and we will start living close to normal lives again. In that spirit, I am giving reading and finishing a book one more shot.

    I pulled down Donald Barthelme’s 60 Stories and started again. “Audere est Facere,” seems to be the idea here. I might fail again. And thus, try again, and sadly, fail again. I know what the right thing to do is, and I just need to keep trying. Everyone gets knocked down, not everyone gets back up.

    Now after having been very dramatic about reading, the other thing is that I do want my daughter to have the habit, the good habit, of reading, and I have to set the example. I have to show her that reading is important, that it’s enjoyable, that it’s the right thing to do. Really, there is my motivation. Just try again.