Bad blogger! No link love for you!!! I’ve been hiding. You know you’ve neglected your blog if several WordPress updates have been released since your last post.

I have some good news to share. Life circumstances and the random acts of others in the blogosphere have brought me out of hiding. There are some new and exciting things on the horizon for 21st Century Dad. Just wait. Hang out. Add me to your RSS feed reader and you won’t miss a beat.

Despite my inactivity, I’ve been featured on a couple of blogs.

Beth at “Open Seven Days A Week. Closed Sundays” decided that I would be a good single dad to profile for Single Parents Day. Don’t let the pretty face and blonde hair fool you. She actually knows what she’s talking about and she is a gifted writer. This is a long-overdue shout-out. She did her little write-up about me back in March! Read all about it.

Once your blog gains some traction, you become interconnected with other bloggers. Through this interconnection, Chris Goforth tracked me down. He’s a Real Authentic Man. I am so tapped out for time to engage in yet another social networking site. I am ashamed to admit that I haven’t responded to his invitation to join Real Authentic Men. OK, so I’m already a member of one Ning site, and that’s the only sign-in I need, but do I just create a profile, post the obligatory profile pic and just pad his numbers? I feel more than just a twinge of guilt if I don’t participate. As if that wasn’t enough, my job has a social network for its employees.

You might know Chris as PapaRocks6 on Twitter. I was featured in his series on Real Authentic Men.

Today is Father’s Day, a celebration of fatherhood and a day to be the best dad you can be. Spend a little extra time with your children. Twilli is visiting her extended family in Oklahoma this week. Mom’s posting photos on Facebook and I can see that they’re having a great time.

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.

• Bobby Williams
• Buck Daddy
• Building Camelot
• Dad of Divas
• Dad Thing
• Dad’s Workbench
• Daddy Dazed
• 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

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.

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.