Sunday, February 27, 2011

The Nard Dog's first Blog Post

This my first post on our blog so go easy on me. As many of you know my wife and I have a secret that is going to create a big change in our lives (and no its not a baby). We are both very excited to be able to tell everyone when the time is right, however that time is not now. I wanted to start contributing to this to tell my side of the story and how it impacts me. In this post I will be telling you how amazing I think my wife is and how lucky I am. For me, tomorrow will be the start of an amazing journey.

This past week I have been VERY stressed at work and have done a very bad job of handling it, but my wife has been a huge help. With Jen's new job she needs to be at work at 4:30am, meaning we go to bed a bit earlier than most people. The past few nights I have worked very late and she has already been asleep. This has been very hard for us since we actually enjoy spending time together (go figure right...). We have also been struggling with the weather and our neighbors who live above us who are VERY loud. Put all of this together and it has been a very challenging week for us, and one I have not made any easier with my stress.

The only thing that really brings me comfort during this stressful time is Jen. She is such an amazing wife that I am truly a lucky guy. This is not the first time I have let stress take over my life, and now the second since we have been together. Because of this I have decided to seek help through therapy. This was a very difficult discussion for me since I always thought people who went to therapy were a bit loony. However, now I'm finding this can be an amazing tool to help me with my stress problem. I am not necessarily opposed to the drugs they may prescribe me, but I am more interested in trying to learn techniques to better handle my stress to not let it take over my life like it has. We have a friend who just finished her masters in counseling and I called her for some advise. She was a huge comfort to me and I ultimately made the decision to do this based on her description of some of the therapy techniques she thinks may help me.

I decided to blog about this because on Monday all my work stress will be coming to a close as my project is due. I also wanted to write about this as away to hold myself accountable to make sure I go and seek the help I need. I know this stress will eventually go away, but I fear one day it will come back and I want to be prepared when it does. Jen means to much to me to try and not figure this out and try and get mentally healthy, and I truly value her support through this difficult time. She is something like a superhero to me.

the waiting is the hardest part

I always think it's funny when blog authors that I read disappear for awhile or post much less frequently.  I've seen it done so many times now that I can almost always guess (and guess correctly) that they are pregnant in the first trimester when they aren't telling people.  When they come back to regular posting with the inevitable pregnancy announcement, they almost always say a version of the exact same thing:

"It was so hard to blog when I had this big secret that I couldn't talk about yet!"

I always thought that was kind of cheesy until now where I am in the same position myself in terms of having a big "secret" (but different, because I AM NOT WITH CHILD) but Adam and I do have several things in the works that aren't blog or Twitter material just yet.  I can't wait for the day that we can share our excitement with everyone we know but it's not quite here just yet.  I am also looking forward to blogging all the time about the literal and figurative journey that we are both about to embark on.  I'm hoping that Adam will also use some of his free time to share thoughts here because I am hoping to document all of the emotions that we experience along the way.

Most of you are reading this post well after I originally wrote it but I set up this blog around New Year's and wanted to start documenting our lives again.  I was starting to think it looks mighty sad to have a "blog" with no posts seeing as how we are almost upon the month of March, so here we are.  Obviously, it's been a learning process for me and that is exactly what I hope to get out of the rest of this blogging-again adventure.

I love Tom Petty and I love almost every song he's ever made.  Most of them speak to me, in some form or another, at various points in my life.  Right now, the song in my head is "The Waiting" and I hear Tom wailing the chorus over and over.  Unfortunately for this incredibly impatient person, I have a lot of other people to depend on before things can really shake down here.  However, we have big plans for the future and good things are happening all around us.