If your going to have a family, be there for your family.

I have been read­ing a lot lately…

Actu­al­ly, I have been read­ing a spe­cif­ic blog for the past nine months. I read all his cur­rent entries, and need­ing more, went on to read his archives and catch­ing up on every­thing this author/actor wrote.

And you know what I got out of it? He real­ly loves his family.

Most of you would think, “Well, so.”

Well, the “so” is this: It made me real­ize that I real­ly take my fam­i­ly for granted.

My youngest is four years old. FOUR YEARS OLD! And even though I joke with her, and play with her, I haven’t spent any real qual­i­ty time with her since need­ing to hold her and feed her a bot­tle of formula.

Many of you would ask, “How can you not spend qual­i­ty time with your kids?”

Sim­ple. I give myself way too many projects to do that take up all my so-called “Free-Time” that I should be spend­ing get­ting to know my own kids.

I also noticed that this author makes him­self step away from the computer/projects and does things with his fam­i­ly and when he writes about those expe­ri­ences, it makes me want to be able to write about my own.

Maybe this is why my six-year-old boy is hav­ing atti­tude prob­lems late­ly. Between switch­ing to night shift and stay­ing on the com­put­er all day, I have dis­rupt­ed his sched­ule and haven’t real­ly been there as much as I used to.

So you know what I did yes­ter­day, when I got off of work ear­ly, instead of plant­i­ng my ass in front of my com­put­er and star­ing at the many projects I nev­er feel like doing, I talked my wife into let­ting the kids stay up longer.

We then went through the mail togeth­er. Now, I know that seems kind of odd, but we went page by page and looked at all the coupons and they told me what they would like to try.

We then pulled out our pho­to box and looked through pho­tos of when I was their age.

Today was an even fun­ner day (Is that even a word?) Today was sup­posed to be gift wrap­ping day. But since noth­ing was sort­ed, I took my son and my 3 year old nephew out to Office Max where we print­ed up the last of our Christ­mas Cards. We even rocked out in the car to my iPod to the songs from Shrek 2. Just us guys.

Then when din­ner rolled around we all sat down and had piz­za and it was great just sit­ting there, even when I was done and just watch­ing the kids act goofy. I loved the feel­ing I had inter­act­ing with them and goof­ing off at the table.

And yet, I still had time today to do some projects. I actu­al­ly felt like I got more done, because I was­n’t try­ing to cram them all into one day. I just relaxed and just hung out with my kids and if I had time to do some of a project, great! If not, oh well. At least I spent time with my kids.

I LOVED IT! I felt like I con­nect­ed with my son AND my nephew! It used to always feel like a chore, some­thing I had to do, but my heart wasn’t in it. Today, it was some­thing I real­ly want­ed to do and want to do again. I found myself look­ing at the “around town” sec­tion of the news­pa­per see­ing what is com­ing up that I can take my kids to. I used to NEVER do that.

So thank you Wil Wheaton, for shar­ing your expe­ri­ences with me, it has helped me to open my eyes and real­ize that fam­i­ly means so much. And I need to real­ize that my shit can wait. Some­times theirs can­not. I need to real­ly “be here for them” and not “here just for me”.

I just had a rev­e­la­tion. I was doing exact­ly what my par­ents did to me. Their TV shows or work or projects were always more impor­tant when­ev­er I had some­thing to share with them or do with them. Maybe now that I real­ized I was repeat­ing a cycle, maybe I can now break it.