Overeducated, underemployed

All right, this is my first post. First off, let me introduce myself. My name's Josh. I'm 31 years old. I have a four year old son. I'm married. I'm a writer with minor successes in minor places. For the past three years, I've been earning my M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. I taught there too, composition mostly, for the sole reason that the grad school agreed to pay my tuition if I did. I'm glad it's over, thrilled actually, gone from the chalk boards and stained dry eraser boards I never used. Away from the talk of literature and the literature that failed to speak to me. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my time there and miss some of the fellow writers . And I even sometimes miss the false bravado of teaching "eager" minds, but what I often reminisce most about, I'm finding, is the half-pints of Jim Beam and Early Times I sometimes poured into a 44-ounce cup before the classes I was taking. That, or downing tall cans of Coors Light before fiction workshops, the one thing that could, and did, take away the pain. But that's all over now.

So where am I today? Back in California. Gold Country, to be exact. Somewhere between Tahoe and San Francisco. A place where white men with beards and river grit beneath their nails had once hanged a lot of other men. I'm back in California, one of the few places I've failed and will probably fail again, a place I like to call the Land of Misopportunity.

But this blog isn't just about me or California or my subtle want to drink a Boulevard while listening to the sweet twang of a Southern belle in the next stool over. No. This is what moving back to California has offered me--the opportunity to stay home and take care of my son, Rowan. This is about him mostly, our daily activities together, what he calls "adventures." This is about the growing phenomenon of stay-at-home dads, the men who "take care of their kids," as Chris Rock once stated, but in a much different context. This is about being a father, a good father, the lunch making, snack giving, booger monitoring, butt wiping, underwear straightening, shoe tying, story-telling, dinosaur stomping, snuggling protector.

Let's just say this blog will be a type of homage to other fathers, a detailed account of what it is to be and not be one of the most important people in the world, if only for a little while. So I hope at least someone will read the upcoming posts, fathers and fathers-to-be, mothers and those expecting, and anyone else who wants to see the ridiculousness and beauty of trying to raise a decent human being in a world filled with a million opposites. And yes, for a certain other group, I will talk about the hot young mothers who are willing to flash their breasts in public places, if only to give their kid his or her hourly feed.