It's Hard to be a Pimp. By Which I Mean: Dadblogger.

Dude, this interweb shit is hard. Every week, coming up with something new to say about the sovereign state of dadhood? Hell, there's just not that much that happens in my world that's interesting. Honestly — is your life that fascinating? Maybe it is. Mine? Not so much.

Look: Maybe your world is something endlessly fascinating. Wrought with drama and intensity and beauty and near-infinite strands of wonder, all waiting to be studied and dissected and distilled down into angular and painstakingly constructed sentences rife with meaning and import and passion. Me? I work. Many long, dull hours. Then I come home. I goof off with my kids. Occasionally I yell at them. Occasionally we just sit on the couch and watch cartoons. Once in a blue moon, they do something remarkable or fascinating. But really? That's about the extent of it.

Sun rises. My son bursts into the room. My wife groans, rolls out of bed and into the shower. My son curls up next to me and bounces with the barely-constrained energy of a bucket of super balls dumped into a paint-shaker. He is overflowing with energy and enthusiasm for the day to come. Eventually, I drag him downstairs, occasionally with one or both of our twin daughters hanging off a spare arm. We flip on the TV; news and weather. A preview of the day to come, generally one I will not see from my windowless office space. In time, my wife and any/all other children descend. Breakfast is served, consumed. My wife flees for the relative safety of her office; I throw clothing on the kids and haul their stinky little carcasses to school.

Work. Work. Work. Work.

I hop in my vehicle, pick up children, return home. Feed them. Change them into PJs. Occasionally, we hose them down. At some point, we shove them into their beds and make it clear that being conscious is no longer an acceptable option. Suddenly, it's 8:30pm, we've been up for 14.5 hours, and it's the first free moment we've had this calendar day.

Repeat x5. Weekends... different fiasco altogether.

This is the reality of my existence. In many ways, it's probably a lot like yours. Drudgery. Stress. Trying to do the right things for your kids; once in a while, actually succeeding. Grappling with failure. Struggling through the day, striving for something more.

Not to embrace a cliché, but really: it is what it is. It could be a lot worse. I'm aware of that. It doesn't stop me from trying to make it better.

This? Here? An excuse to find some beauty in it all. Or to capture a moment in time - or really, not much of a moment at all... just a fleeting instant of time and place and personality and happenstance - like an ant in amber. Suspend it. Study it. Distill it into a more pure essence, and then press the green button. Publish.

And, if I'm lucky, find that in the midst of it all I'm not alone.

I don't know what I'm doing. But thank you for allowing me to figure it out.

Or try. At least there's that.