This Dads Blog

This was kindly used as a guest post by Tim Atkinson on his blog bringing up charlie, Which I insist you go read, if you haven't done so already. If you haven't already read any of Tims posts, why not?

For some reason, known only to the deepest darkest recesses of my brain, I took up blogging. I had thought about doing it in the past but never really had anything to blog about, but this time, this time was different. This time I was a dad. This time I had something to say.

Or so I thought.

Let me give you a brief overview of my writing experience:

* made to write some stuff at when I was at school
* I think I failed English, but I’m not sure
* I once wrote some poetry - it was crap
* The longest email I’ve ever sent was about 50 words
* I'm studying for a degree so have to write scientific reports

So I’m sure you will surmise from that rather short list that I have all the writing skills of a small Amazonian tree frog and you wouldn’t be far wrong. I’m giving it a go anyway.

So far I’ve only actually written four blog posts and to be honest they’re not that good*. But looking on the positive side, they’re better than the aforementioned poetry and they’re a start. Not only am I finding it difficult to put into words what I’m thinking (and to be fair with what goes on in my head it’s not surprising really) but I’m also finding it difficult to comprehend how big the world of ‘daddy blogging’ is.

I was aware of mum blogging as during my wife’s pregnancy we frequented the go to mums sites where there is a lot of advertising for mum bloggers. What there wasn’t, and as far as I can tell still isn’t, was the same thing but for dads. So I did some searching and found two forums and a couple of similar blogs. The forums seemed to be a dead end so I gave up on them; the blogs however were just the tip of the iceberg. From each blog I followed link after link to other dad bloggers, most of who are in the United States.

There was a whole world out there of people just like me! Well, not just like me, god forbid. The world would be a crazy, if colourful, place if the world was full of people like me. You get the gist though, I wasn’t alone anymore. I was part of something and that something was something big!

Natural progression took me onto twitter and linked me with lots of other dads. The thing is though, as a newbie who has no real idea how to write, I feel like I’m at a party where I don’t know anyone and I’m considering bolting out the front door. What I should do is make for the kitchen and grab a drink. So this post is me doing just that. Getting myself onto the dance floor and getting myself known.

So that’s about that then. I’ve used similes and metaphors, my punctuation and grammar are reasonable and my spelling should be perfect (if not, I want a new spell checker!). I’ve somehow managed to write yet another blog post and I have no doubt that when I read it back it will make little or no sense.

Hopefully this will get a few views and at least one comment that will include some tips or constructive criticism. From there I can only get better. Thanks for reading.

*When I wrote this my blog only had four posts.