The Hardest Year

This has been the longest dry spell for my blog yet. It does take effort to post here, and it does seem to be a dying medium, but those aren't the reasons.

At first, it was because of the house hunt, which became all-consuming because the market is so stacked against us. We would literally be signing the paperwork to buy a house only to have it be sold while we were in the process. In retrospect, I wish I had journaled that saga, because there were so many twists and turns, and so many utterly ridiculous moments, that I wouldn't even know where to begin. It was so crazy, you wouldn't have believed it anyway. Austin is madness.

Then there was some bad blood that kept me reticent to the point of all but shuttering the blog. The wrong people were reading it, for what I had to say at the time.

The roller coaster ride of the house hunt was more emotionally draining than you'd expect. We had to expand our search radius by a lot, just to find anything in the window we had. Within hours, I would go from accepting the defeat of being forced to live an hour away in a town I didn't want to having it bought up anyway, thereby having the tough decision made for us. Within hours, going from adjusting to the reality of one place to seriously considering a completely different lifestyle in a different area altogether. But both of our businesses are rooted in the greater Austin area, so we had to be close enough to continue on Repeat this process a few times a week, every week, for months. It was draining and harder that you could understand, even after I just tried to explain it, albeit with just an overview.

At first, that was why I wasn't using this blog.

And then, we managed to find a place... around the time the baby was born. And then that was the reason I didn't use the blog for a while.

Then, an unexpected and very rare pregnancy complication arose. Severe suffering on my wife's part was bad enough, but side effects include fetal death, so we had to abandon our intentions of natural birth and be induced four weeks early to avoid a stillbirth. That's some scary shit.

Liam was born on February 27, after I forget how long--three days?--of labor, replete with "complications" there, too. And there were harrowing moments of fear and doubt during that roller coaster ride, too. To explain how and why would be a lengthy blog post in and of itself. I don't want to get into it now. The only reason to explain it this far after the fact would be to garner credibility toward my claim that this has been the hardest year yet. Oh, but there's more to go.

I should have made a nice, flowery post about fatherhood. But I didn't. I couldn't. I should have made the well-written, thoughtful entry that people used to tell me they enjoyed about this page. But I didn't. I couldn't.

And then, we had unexpected problems with the house we bought. Lots of problems. As in, we are still not technically living there, and it's late October. We should have been able to move in in March. For the first month, it was a red tape issue. But then, we discovered more problems.

Are you with me so far? It was all one thing after another, crisis after crisis, week after week, all through the winter. But you aren't getting that. To you, it sounds like the usual complaining about "first world" problems (although I am pretty sure pregnancy complications are prevalent in the third world as well).

And then, at the end of April, we found out that my wife has breast cancer. It has been a hard summer. And I have gained a profound ability for understatement ever since then.

So then that became the reason I was too busy to sit down and chronicle everything for you.

There have been epic car troubles, as well. And we had to work all through Memorial Day weekend redoing the roof before the record-breaking rains destroyed everything. There are so many other things that have gone wrong, on top of everything else. Really, I should have chronicled everything throughout the year and been a loyal little blogger boy, but then everyone would have stopped reading out of depression.

Juliet has had some surgery, and will go back for more surgery in December.

Right now, we are swamped with work, Halloween being our busiest season. But I have managed to sneak in some pleasant diversions in the spirit of it, which I like to think I am famous (notorious?) for. I do love Halloween. I just wish it felt like fall here, but it never does.

But here we are. Halloween is almost here, and I have nothing to say about it.

2015 has been the hardest year, and considering some of the times I've had since grad school, that's saying something.

I have every intention of making 2016 a very good year. Full of productivity, rest and recreation, rekindled friendships, and an overall sense of redemption. Things are going to turn around for me. In January.

So, yeah. There are volumes more to say on all these subjects, but... now that the silence is broken, I want to tell you a story about a warrior bard...