The frequency of postings has declined over the past year. Those of you who know me on Facebook and Twitter also know I am fairly active there. Longtime readers, or rather, the friends I’ve made while I was posting regularly, will know that I tend to put a lot of thought into my blog posts. For the regular news from my life, Facebook and Twitter have been my outlets. I’m sure the time I spend chatting with friends or leaving witty comments on people’s status updates could’ve been used to craft a dozen or so blog posts over the past year.

Guitar Center

After moving to Tennessee, I wasn’t very picky about job prospects. I knew I needed to get a job ASAP. I wasn’t really interested in working at a music store again, but I had experience and knowledge to do it. Guitar Center was the first place that offered me a job, and it turned out to be a much better place to work than I had initially imagined. I am in control of how much I earn. I have fun every day. I work with a great bunch of guys and gals. I have announced to upper management that Guitar Center is part of my long-term plans.

Being around musicians and people who love music has reawakened the desire to play again. This time around, I’m going to refresh my piano playing skills. The keyboard excites me now. Guitar doesn’t do it for me like it used to.

No More Amazon.com Goodies

Due to my employment at Guitar Center, my involvement with the Amazon Associates program would constitute a conflict of interest. Yes, Amazon.com sells musical instruments. Of course, I would much rather you buy from Guitar Center. I quietly terminated the Amazon goodness a while ago, but haven’t gotten around to announcing the end of a good run.

Final Thoughts for the Day

Most people probably stopped reading about 200 words ago. Put “Facebook” in the title of a blog post or mention social media, and it’s instant link-bait. If you’re still with me, that probably means you’re a stalker or immune to the rampant ADD in our society today.

This blog isn’t going away. It’s just become more like a quarterly newsletter than a blog. There is plenty in the archives for new dads. I still get a fair amount of traffic based on the strength of some of my posts.

I still schedule posts to go live at 8:07. 8/07 is Twilli’s birthday. 8:07pm in 24-hour format is 20:07. Twilli was born in 2007.

F-Bombs and Other Linguistic Landmines

One of the cutest things a toddler does is repeat something he or she just heard. It’s cute until your precious little one says something that would be bleeped on TV.

Many years ago, an old boss of mine admonished his young son for dropping an F-bomb. It was clear from his response that he disapproved.

“Don’t ever #*&@ing say @#^% again!”

It became a running joke.

In another instance, I witnessed a woman on the bus talking to one of her son’s friends. He showed the woman a picture of her son on his camera phone. The boy was making a hand gesture commonly used on the roads in South Florida. The woman was appalled and liberally peppered her diatribe with F-bombs. She took out her cell phone, called her son, and a colorful lecture ensued. Because of an editorial decision that affects all my writing here on 21st Century Dad, I cannot provide a transcript.

In Frugal Dad’s review of  Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream, by Adam Shepard, he lamented that it contained enough profanity to turn off much of its potential audience. It’s a shame that it would be seen as such a problem. I encounter plenty of profanity, but I don’t pass harsh judgment on people who use it. The author’s intent was to give the book another layer of realism. I don’t consider that gratuitous usage. It was a creative decision made by the author.

One night, Renee and I brought Twilli to a meeting. A guy was wearing a t-shirt that said, “New York F—ing City.” He apologized for displaying profanity around our baby. I replied, “it’s all good, bro. She can’t read yet anyway.”

Who Blinks First

Most of the adults I know are sensible enough to know when and where profanity is inappropriate to use. There are some adults who refrain from it altogether. I have an ex-girlfriend who only managed to say, “fuh!” in a moment of extreme duress.

I am no saint, but I refrain from using profanity in mixed company. I don’t use it in my writing because it forces me to be more creative. I will rarely blink first when talking to someone I just met. But I do keep a mental roster of those who are OK with it, those who are definitely not OK with it, and those who I prefer to stay on the safe side with, but would move into the “safe” column once they blink. Those who blinked first are in what I call my “circle of profanity.” Okay, I never called them that before. I just made it up. The Bible Belt has a buckle shaped like a giant parallelogram. I live inside that parallelogram. I’ve always been careful, and my usual verbal patterns need no modification here.

If you are a user of profanity, you probably self-censor depending on who you’re with or where you are. You feel a sense of relief when it’s OK to refrain from editing. Sometimes we use it to build rapport.

What You Can Do

The easy answer (and the harder thing to do) is not to swear around your children. If you never use profanity, and your child drops an F-bomb, you can always blame an in-law.

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It’s so cliché, but it’s so true. Having children sends you into a vortex where space and time get grossly distorted. My truest of true loves turns 2 today.

I never heard a more beautiful sound than her first cries as she made her explosive entry into the world. She was so tiny, delicate, and precious. I could be happy freezing any given moment and having her stay that way forever, yet I daydream about what she’d be like as a 2 year old, 5 year old, pre-teen, teenager, and a young woman. Time would stand still, especially when she was throwing one of her epic tantrums. Then we’d reach a milestone and realize how fast it all seemed to have gone by.

The first year was marked by dramatic physical changes. She grew to 3 times her birth weight. All that thick dark hair fell out and was slowly replaced by her current golden-brown locks. She cut her first teeth. She was one super-duper chubby-wubby obviously-breast-fed baby for a while. She started crawling, then cruising, then she took her tentative first steps without help from mommy or daddy.

Between ages 1 and 2, it gets really interesting. She is growing cognitively. The rate of physical growth slows, but continues. She looks so tiny and so huge all at the same time. Twilli started to talk. She could say a few words. You could clearly ascertain from the context that she knew what she was talking about vs. mimicking what she hears.

“Pretty!”

“More? More?”

“No.”

“Nurse! NURSE! NURSE!”

“Ooh, what’s this?”

“Daddy!”

“Mommy!”

Our relationship has moved into a new phase. We are communicating verbally. Lengthier conversational volleys are on the horizon.

As much as there is to teach, I have learned so much. I have opened my eyes to my own Korean heritage. I continue to eat garlic and insanely spicy food in large quantities. Twilli also enjoys some pretty spicy food for a toddler. There are many more lessons in store for me.

I unsubscribed from almost all of my feeds.

I still love you guys and gals. You now show up in my Google Reader instead of my inbox.

I can now consolidate all my RSS subscriptions in one place. My entire computing life is more streamlined now. Having a Google account gives me some cool online tools. I can squeeze even more functionality out of my non-smart phone.

If you’re not cool enough to have a smartphone, the next best thing is an unlimited text messaging plan connected your social media accounts.

Now that I have a Google account and iGoogle homepage that I’m actually using, I’m looking at Google’s SMS goodies even further. A detailed post about how I make my dumb phone smarter will be coming soon.

Photo: Renee Holiday

I would be completely remiss if I didn’t post today. I want to shout out to a couple of guys who will be celebrating their first ever Father’s Days:

Pat, Chris, and Brandon (you guys know who you are). Welcome to the club! You think changing dirty diapers is fun now, wait til they start getting squirmy.

When I started this blog, I enjoyed the ad-hoc social network created around bloggers in one’s niche and interests. Now my social networking time is spent on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

With the transition from Florida to Tennessee, some plates stopped spinning. Some balls got dropped. My voice is even lower now. I get enough positive encouragement to continue this blog, albeit on a very sparse posting schedule. I’ve connected with several people through it, and continue to connect. Many of those connections have been carried through to my “big three” social networking sites. Is that kind of like owning the same album on 8-track, LP, cassette, CD, and mp3? Okay, I may not be old enough to have an 8-track player, but I do remember them. If I’m too old to shop at Abercrummy and Filth, then I’m certainly old enough to remember 8-tracks, or at least LPs.

Today is Father’s Day, a celebration of fatherhood and another opportunity for retailers to hawk their wares. While it’s a day to buy yet another barbecue grill set or another tie he won’t wear,  it’s a day to be the best dad you can be. Turn it up a notch or two, or three.

Say hi to some of these great dads out there in the blogosphere. Most are dad bloggers, but some are bloggers who happen to be dads.

• Buck Daddy
• Building Camelot
• Dad of Divas
• Dad Thing
• Dad’s Workbench
  
• Daddy’s Toolbox
  
• Discovering Dad
• DIY Father
  
• Frugal Dad
• Hubby, Daddy, Techie
• Joeprah
• Metro Dad
• Mocha Dad
• Planet Saturday
• Rice Daddies
• Steve Pavlina
• Strobist
• The Busy Dad Blog
• The Wisdom Journal
• TipDad
• Vegan Dad