Existing as a Nuclear Family

It has been some time since I became assimilated into my own nuclear family. In that time I have accomplished quite a bit. I've finished the first part of my education; become a pseudo-stay-at-home-dad; discovered some of the many trials and tribulations that a couple (especially one with kid(s)) goes though; and determined what I want to do with my life: teach. Those are only facets of my life though. It is what lies beneath those facets that my true life exists.
Within the confines of my malleable existence, I have my family: Heather, Zoey, Princess and myself. All of us have something to contribute to our lives. All of us bring some sort of amusement to one another. All of us also bring love and share it with each member of this family. But at the same time, we all demonstrate imperfect inclusions in our lives. Zoey can be stubborn and belligerent and we may hate it, but it's who she is. Heather may do things in a completely different way than myself, and they may annoy the hell out of me, but that is her. I may be lazy at times, but all of us are, the laziest among us being our dog.
No matter what we do or what we trow onto the table, we all deal with it. Zoey may not like it when we show her who's the boss, but that's what a parent has to do. The child is not the boss. The parents are in control of the journey of the family. Granted, we, as parents, do not know everything and sometimes make erroneous decisions. We do our best, even when we are riding this bucking bronco that is our life by the seat of our pants and holding on for dear life. We hope that the chaos we deal with on a continual basis will settle down and in the end, we will have succeeded in baking a delicious and successful cookie of a child.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." as Dickens stated so eloquently. That is life. That is parenthood. That is childhood even. That is also the state of our fragile world. All we can do is do our best, right?

A Normal Life

It is incredible to me how quickly life can swing into chaos, but still seem normal. Since I finished school, I actually feel like I'm busier, which is kind of odd. I have my job (Tues-Fri), a 6 year-old daughter, a home to keep up and an always tired fiancee. These four things keep me busy and at times a very fructrating busy, but all the while, everything still feels normal. I wonder what life will feel like when I replace the job part with "My first semester at a 4-year college." Hmmm.....

I've been taking tons of pictures lately. If you head over to my Flickr, you can see my daughter in her first dance recital. It was really fun trying to shoot in a very low light situation and I'm very proud of how my camera performed.

What have you Accomplised Today?

I had a fascinating encounter with a genius today. While wandering over to my boss's office, I ran into Dr. Wardle, a brilliant and fascinating man who is an expert on child development. He was asking how I was and what I was doing. He actually asked if I was teaching, probably because it has been so long since I had class with him and I'm still here on campus or because I was walking around with my computer. Or, even better, maybe I look like a teacher already! In response, I told him I just doing my job as a TA, getting things done. It was then that he asked me what I have accomplished today, perhaps even at all. At the moment, I just replied with a sarcastic quip that we all accomplish what we can, or something like that. But later on, it I had an epiphany pertaining to his question and it caused me to think about something very profound: what have I accomplished today (or any day)?

I was floored. That simple, fundamental thought made me look back on the past couple of weeks and think hard about what I had done in that time. How I had worked, played, lived and so on. Then, even more surprising was the fact that I began to questing how I defined the word "accomplished" in the context of the question. What does it mean to accomplish something? and even then, is it an accomplishment. It was a paradigm shattering thought to my intelligent brain and it made me ponder my future plans for the day in the context of "accomplishing something" and I had the sincere hope that I could pull some kind of accomplishment off.

It is thought provoking experiences like that, that happen not often enough that make us pause and evaluate what we are doing in life. What we live for, work for, strive for, what does it all mean and what are we trying to accomplish in our endeavours? I hope to accomplish at least one very special thing in life: to leave a lasting impact on someone in a positive and enriching way, be they a student, person on the street or my daughter. I want to touch someone in a way that makes a difference in their lives, and maybe even in the world.