I just spent the last two hours picking a WordPress theme for this blog and designing the header “most of which I yoinked from a WordPress theme download site, so I figure that’s fair game”. It made me remember why I was most prolific as a blogger when I was between jobs. It can be an incredible time sink, and a wonderful distraction.
In the time since I started this blog in 2003 “or the blog that this has become”, I’ve had three different jobs, gotten married, bought a new house and had a baby. Things are almost immeasurably changed for me since my blog heyday. I said a long time ago in my daddy blog that I didn’t want to repeat tired parenting cliches as though they were profound new discoveries. That being said, I can barely remember the feeling of having an entire evening, an entire day, an entire week to kill and looking for something – a blog, for instance, or lurking in online dating sites – to fill it.
If it sounds like I’m wistful for that feeling, I’ll point out there’s another feeling I haven’t forgotten: worrying about paying the mortgage. Trust me, I am not wistful for that feeling. I have no wist whatsoever in that regard. When it comes to that feeling, I am completely wistless.