A Paper Tiger

please let there be girls that always love their dad and never ever in their whole lives say they hate him. and please let mine be one of them.

i can’t stand the thought of my girl growing up and not liking me. not even if it’s just for 5 minutes. she’s just so sweet and innocent and beautiful and i always want to be her best friend and i am an absolute mess when i think about things turning out otherwise.

deep breaths. she’s only just shy of 3 months. plenty of time to make sure she always likes me forever.

forever.

please.

i put in my two weeks at costco this past monday.

i’m going to build websites and work from home.

sarah isn’t going to go back to her job, she’s going to stay home with the baby Olive.

we’re both going to stay home with the baby Olive.

i was pursuing a regular “real job” for a while, but freelance is the position i wanted to be in eventually anyway, so why not just start there?

i’m going to work from home and be my own boss and set my own schedule and vacation when i want to and i can take my work with me to any place in the world and still have a job.

if i can bill for 20 hours of work a week, i can make up what I would have made part time at costco, plus what my wife made at her full time job. and to celebrate going full time freelance, i think i’ll give myself a raise.

i get to work on new projects all the time and with new people and i get to feel the accomplishment of finishing said projects and learning from them and getting better all the time.

i’m stepping into the kind of job that men and women much older than myself hope and dream they’ll get to have “one day…”

and thank you God, my father and provider, that i’ve got enough faith to make this work for our family.

now, to make it through this last week of costco. i’m super busy with web work right now and costco has really been getting in the way of that. if any of you know a guy who knows a guy that needs a website, send them my way :)

pretty excited though. my daughter will not grow up with daddy issues. not a chance.

I was going through some old stuff and came across a folder from one of my college reading/writing classes. I miss those kind of classes. but i found a paragraph I had written down by hand, and I think it;s the first or last paragraph of a short story called “Snow” by Ann Beatie:

This is a story, told the way you say stories should be told. Somebody grew up, fell in love and spent a winter with her lover in the country. This, of course, is the barest outline and futile to discuss. It’s as pointless as throwing birdseed on the ground while snow still falls fast. Who expects small things to survive when even the largest get lost? People forget years and remember moment. Seconds and symbols are left to sum things up: the black shroud ove the pool. Love, in its shortest form, becomes a word. What I remember about all that time is one winter. The snow. Even now, saying “snow,” my lips move so that they kiss the air.

i love the line “People forget years and remember moments.”

i forgot how much I love reading, and in turn how much i enjoy writing as well. The Kindle Sarah got me for my birthday has reminded me what it’s like to say to yourself “just one more chapter, then i’ll go to sleep.” and then of course it’s another 3 chapters before you put it down. it’s a good feeling. I’m reading the Hunger Games books, just finished the first and started the second last night. lovin’ it.

more reading stuff, less watching stuff. that sounds nice.