There's a first time...

...for everything, and there's a seventh time, too. To be more precise, this is the seventh journal I've kept for any length of time, but the first time it's had a potential audience beyond my immediate family.
I'm a tad apprehensive at this. Let's be honest: this site won't register in Google's top ten. But it's a step forward, and I've come to like it here in my stagnant swamp.
Lately--read, for the last year or two--it seems like everything and everyone is conspiring to whisper in my ear: "Write...write...write..." Every letter I've sent to an editor has been published, almost verbatim. (Why won't they pay for those?) My lovely and insistent wife has been asking me if I've noticed that every letter I've written to an editor has been published almost verbatim. An old girlfriend, whose novel I once edited, is now a published writer. A friend of only slightly more recent vintage (hi, Jen!) has joined the blog continuum. Into every writer's ass the boot must kick.
So here comes the seventh iteration of my written security blanket. Not a moment too soon, either: I've got a home of my own on the way, six weeks off and almost in sight; kids to follow maybe six or nine months later but already in earshot.
Lately my emotions have been Mixmastered on high. Well, mixed, at least...not necessarily mastered. I'm reasonably comfortable with owning my own home--until the first unexpected expense crops up. I'm moderately okay with kids, until the first unexpected...wait a minute, do kids ever do anything that's not unexpected?
I think that in a nutshell, the unexpected is what's unnerving me. It isn't the prospect of adopting a couple of kids per se, because I know that both Eva and I have a lot to offer children. It's that I'm not sure they'll take what we have to offer.
I'm working through this. I'm sure the parenting classes will help, much the way our premarital class did. Ultimately fatherhood and writing have a lot in common: they both require discipline and self-confidence.
Oh yeah, and a quiet space every now and again doesn't hurt.