It

So the big new news around this blog that has actually prevented me from writing as often over the last couple months is that in about six more months, I'm going to become a father. Yeah. And I thought hearing myself referred to as a "husband" sounded jarring.
We've known about this development since late October, but keeping with societal expectations, we waited until a couple weeks ago to start telling other people. So for almost two months I've carried around this huge bit of personal news that I was unable to share in any format with almost anyone (our parents and siblings excepted). This was awkward for me. Not so much socially--actually conversing live with other people--but via email responses and especially sitting here typing in this space. There have been many times when I've read something preposterous (and I've read a lot about babies/pregnancies already) or something crazy occurred to me, that I have really wanted to share it on the blog, what seems to be the natural place for such things.
Now that all is in the open, I find myself leaning toward another impulse: restraint. Having a baby is not only a slightly more personal event than most, but it's also something with which most of my friends and acquaintences have little to no direct relationship with, so turning now to regular baby-prep talk would seem irresponsibly self-involved. Also, the long history of parents or parents-to-be behaving in an embarrassingly haughty and superior manner tends to make me a little more afraid of seeming anything like that. Sure, this new life will necessarily become the most important thing in my life, but I guess what I'm saying is that it doesn't have to become a club that I metaphorically beat everyone around me over the head with. For me it is of supreme importance; for others it is merely another facet of who I am when they see me.
It's another huge barrier being placed between my private and public lives. First it was general maturity and self-recognition, then a big one was marriage and devoting a much larger piece of myself to a single person instead of a community, and now this. There is nothing wrong with having a clear distinction between public and private selves. Some people can live long lives without them, but for most it's perfectly instinctual. As long as we are always honest, we are who we are, no matter where we are or who we are with. It's just the natural discipline to keep our business separate that changes. We don't talk about our fantasy football teams or our pass-out drunk stories with our mothers. We don't talk about our fathers' health problems with our seldom-seen college friends. And we don't usually talk about the jewelry we buy for our wives with our daily friends. These details can occasionally be interested across barriers, but more often than not they aren't. Striking a healthy balance among these things is an interesting life change for someone like me.
Back to the topic at hand: I don't figure to start talking about babies or kids very often in conversation unless prompted to do so first. But this blog I will handle differently. I'll let it come out naturally. Invariably, I will use it as a main topic, but just as clearly I will stop myself and make sure it's interesting or relevant to anything first.
This brings me to a thought about just what this blog's purpose is, both for me and for you. A couple years ago I think I wrote mostly for a faceless audience and consciously tried to entertain. This of course fed both my ego and my artistic side. I still try to do this from time to time but more lately--as my "life" has seemed to finally start in earnest--there has been a kind of desire for posterity from me, as though I only want to get it all down so I have a record of it. This type of content can still be interesting, but in a totally different way than simple entertainment. I guess the goal of everything remains the same: to try to show what it is like to be me, what it's like to live my life and, most importantly, simply what it is like to see the world from my perspective. A lot of people have been 29 and married and white and male and expecting a child, but I never have. So we'll see.