Why Don't He Write? (Or Read)

There's a scene in the movie Dances With Wolves that always cracks me up. Lt. John J. Dunbar (Kevin Costner) hitches a ride with a crass drayage teamster known as Timmons (Robert Pastorelli) across the untamed prairie land enroute to the frontier outpost Dunbar has requested to be transferred to. It's clear Dunbar's romantic idealism about the wild west and its Native American inhabitants cloud his understanding of the harsher realities that surround him. Dunbar begins to get a sense of this after he and Timmons happen upon a half decayed corpse riddled with arrows. Shocked, Dunbar stands in silence at this unsettling discovery. Timmons, however, leans down over the body, and then breaks out in laughter before joking, "I bet somebody back East's askin' 'Why don't he write?'"

That's me at the moment--the dead guy shot full of arrows--which is my way of explaining why I'm not writing as much (on my blog anyway) now and over the next few weeks. Why? For one, we're in the middle of moving from our apartment to a house (yay), and with me being the only one home, guess who's doing the majority of the packing/unpacking?

Once the move's over with, the girls are off school eating significantly into my goof off time. Then, later in June we will be going on vacation up north where we will also be picking up my boys who will be staying with us for all of July (YAY!). Of course this also means that I will be entertaining five kids for that month while keeping up with other writing assignments and deadlines (plus a few book signings and prep for some speaking engagements). Still, crazy as it will be, I'm really looking forward to the time together with my whole family.

I should say too that the above mentioned reasons will also greatly reduce the amount of time I can spend reading many of the great blogs I otherwise regularly visit. Unfortunately, it's during these slow blog periods when I tend to lose a fraction of regular readers, because they don't think I like them anymore. Not so. I still think you're awesome. Understand, it's nothing personal; it's just family.

However, that all said, I will stay in contact via Twitter, Facebook, etc and will have a number of articles and guest posts coming up over the next several weeks at places like DadCentric, The Good Men Project Magazine, The M3 Summit blog, Houston Family Magazine, and The Tsunammi Mommy, as well as joining a talented bunch of writers at new online men's magazine called Man of the House.Com. Along with this, I'll be having several guests posters posting here and I'll be sharing thoughts on a couple great dad books, Tales From The Trips by John Cave Osborne and Stefan Lanfer's The Faith Of A Child.

So bear with me as we move through the summer together, but above all, thanks to all of you for sticking with me through the year. As always, you humble me.

You can read more such drivel in my book, Sugar Milk: What One Dad Drinks When He Can't Afford Vodka