The One Where I Introduce My New Blog

Well, here we are. My pilot episode. Blog entry número uno. For the non-Spanish speaking of you out there that means Blog entry numéro un. For the non-French speaking of you out there that means I know how to use Google Translate.

I'm sitting here, laptop on my lap (where else would it go, my head?), writing this on New Year's Eve, 2014. Why yes, I really do know how to party, thank you for noticing. For reasons that will become more or less apparent a couple paragraphs from now, I gave myself the goal to start a blog on January 1, 2015 and now it's just hours away. Nothing like waiting to the last moment, right? The year 2015 … wait, is it really 2015?! I mean, that's the year Marty McFly traveled to the future in Back to the Future Part II. Craziness. And here we are. No hoverboards, no flying cars, no Cafe '80s with a creepily Max Headroomed Ronald Regan and Michael Jackson waitstaff. Nope. None of that. I can't help but think we're all getting seriously gypped here. But I'm digressing. I do that a lot.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Blog entry number one. It's “The One Where I Introduce My New Blog.” I fully realize that I'm extremely late to the party here; everyone and their Grandma's dog has a blog these days. Does the world really need another one? Not really. So why me? Why now? Well, all I can say is up until now I had been using (and abusing) Facebook's Status Updates to expose my soul to the world and decided that maybe I should instead do it in a forum where people could more easily ignore me. Instead of my random musings being forced upon you, intermixed with the stuff you really care about (like “Which Disney Princess Am I?”), you now have to go to a completely separate, standalone website to consume my random, silly observations on life. Or not. I'll still be doing it on Facebook, too. That said, I'm pretty sure, for the most part, I'll be talking (or writing) to myself here on this blog. Don't worry, I totally get it — who has time for these things these days? Seriously … we've got enough going on in our own lives. Now just imagine if we had hoverboards … we'd have even less time. And this is precisely why it's taken me so long to start a blog, despite the many urges I've had to do so. Honest, there's been at least 7 or 8 people who have said, “You should blog!” By the way, 7 or 8 people, you'd better be reading this because you're the ones that got me into this mess. You know who you are. That said, I suspect that there might be a couple of you that might check my blog out at first, just as a courtesy, and I do really appreciate that. Thanks for stopping by. Care to have a hot beverage? I've got some Swiss Miss cocoa (product placement, please pay me promptly Swiss Miss) in the pantry. After that, I'm pretty sure most of you won't be back again this way anytime soon and, like I said above, that's cool — I get it.

No, I decided instead that I'll be writing this blog mostly for myself and for my kids (not that I mind the extra readers, mind you). Ah yes, my kids … my 2 craaaaaazy children (no, really, they are). The girl one and the boy one. From here on out, I will refer to them as either their respective ages (which is the method I've been using on Facebook) or by their nicknames Chipmunk and Big Guy (nicknames I'm sure they'll really love as they get older). It is my hope that someday they'll be able to look back on this blog (assuming there will still will be an interwebs then) and laugh. Hopefully they'll laugh anyway. It'll probably depend on how old they are at the time they read it. You see, anyone who is familiar with the stuff I've been writing on Facebook knows that a lot of what I was posting on there had to do with my kids and my daily struggles with being a father. Of course, I try to put a humorous spin on it … because who really wants to read about someone else's kids? Blech. Believe me … I wouldn't either. That also said, I promise there will be other silly stuff in my blog that doesn't have to do with my kids, too. There may even be a few more serious themed entries here and there in the category of what I like to call “A Very Special Episode of 'Life is Funny.'” Because, let's be honest, sometimes life kind of sucks now and then and writing about these things personally helps me work through it. But then who really wants to read about all that stuff either? I don't know. Someone hopefully. Really, thinking about it now, this whole thing is just a form of cheap therapy for me to be perfectly honest.

And then there was the second reason I have been putting this off for so long. What to name it? It sounds silly, but this has been a big holdup for me. It's important. I wanted to give it a cool name … something profound, yet slightly humorous. Maybe something self-deprecating (a favorite hobby of mine). Or perhaps something that was a play on words … I've been known to be an aficionado and purveyor of puns from time to time. Ideally the name would be something that encompasses all of the above. Something that said, in a single phrase, what kind of “things” (for lack of a more elegant word) people could expect to find in my blog. I tormented myself over names for months and I can't say I'm 100% happy with what I settled on at the top of the page. I came up with a huge list where I just spitballed. Some weren't bad, some were “eh” and most were horribly cheesy. Here's a just a few:

• Is My Blog Showing?

• It Was Like That When I Got Here

• “What the Hell is That Smell?” and Other Joys of Fatherhood

• Fatherhood and Other Natural Disasters

• Sometimes I Think I'm Funny

• So Then This Happened …

• Hey Look! It's Another Blog!

• I Feel a Blog Coming On

• Been There, Blogged About It

• Brian's Blogables

• Life LOL

• I Couldn't Make This Stuff Up If I Tried

• I Swear I'm Not Making This Up

• Great … Dad's Blogging Again

• Dadly Do-Write

• Blogging Up the Drain

• Blogging Up My Brain

• Writing My Wrongs

• A Cheesehead in Hollywood (this will be the title of my forthcoming memoirs)

• Write On Time

• Life in Blog Form

• The Way I See It

• Brian's Blog Emporium

• Brian's Brain

• Bloggity Blah Blah Blog

• Brian's Happy Fun Time Blog and Variety Hour

• Like Sands Through the Hourglass, These are the Blogs of My Life

So the name I finally went with is most likely FPO (for positioning only, for those that don't speak Graphic Design) and could change if I come up with something else that feels better to me. Feel free to comment below if you like any of the above. Who knows, I could be swayed by popular opinion. Please also note that the overall look of this blog is far from established, as well. I'm perfectly aware that right now it isn't exactly a good representation of my graphic design skills (or lack thereof). I just moved in, things are still in boxes and I haven't bought any furniture yet. I promise I'll get to it eventually, but I decided to focus on the words first. Until then, hopefully you will as well.

Ultimately, I'm just hoping that a special someone will come along and read and see massive potential in this little ol' blog and offer me an enormous amount of money for it or something inspired by it (dare I say a movie? A sitcom? A book? All 3?) so I can finally start living the life of luxury that I so desperately would like to become accustomed to. That's not too much to ask is it? I think not. You see I love to write, always have. Ever since I was a toddler and (allegedly) wrote on the walls. Whether or not people care to read what I write is another thing, but writing is something I really, truly enjoy doing. In fact, I moved to Hollywood to be a screenwriter (true story). Turns out there's a few others out here that have done the same exact thing so that hasn't exactly happened for me yet. Emphasis on the word yet. In fact, I should be writing scripts right now and not blog entries. Or I could do both. Sure, there's plenty of time for that.

Well, if you've made it this far, you've endured enough of me today. I'll stick a fork in it for now. If you are one of my children reading this then I hope you laughed a little at your weirdo dad. At the end of the day, that's been my only true goal in life, to make you guys laugh or at least smile, on a daily basis. Just remember, life can be difficult, it can be painful ... but it can also be funny. It's all a matter of perspective. Try to find the funny. It's there if you look hard enough.

And as I said above, thanks for stopping by. Oh, and Happy New Year! Now where's my freaking hoverboard?!