Tag Archives: dadlife

August 2, 2026 · 12:09 pm

August 1, 2026

I was originally going to title this post as “I attended a funeral on my 28th wedding anniversary while reading poetry.”

I also thought about the title, “What is life if all we do is die?”

Instead I dated the post, because it was yesterday, and now it is a memory. I read a book of poetry, had a lovely dinner with my wife, and have a program from the funeral. I am driven to write a blog post about why any of it matters. (Yes, I thought of writing a poem, but the muse is indicating this is a blog post about connecting dots.)

So let me explain the dots.

First, I am doing the Sealy Challenge: reading a book of poetry everyday in August. Yesterday I read Today Means Amen by Sierra DeMulder. Today I am reading Dragging Sand Creek for Minnows by William Kloefkorn. I’ll come back to the poetry later.

Second, yesterday was our 28th anniversary. We had dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, The Odyssey. (The best bread pudding dessert. It was lemon blueberry this time!) Of course we talked about the last 28 years, but the funeral we attended in the morning was the main conversation topic.

Third dot, the funeral of my wife’s aunt, age 83. She was the youngest of seven children. The church was filled with family. She had 10 children of her own, 27 grandchildren and 38 great-grandchildren. I am always amazed at the size of my wife’s side of our family. 

The last page of the program summarized 83 years of her life. There was a table at the luncheon that had photo albums and the wedding album of her aunt’s marriage. Especially at lunch the air was filled with stories, and with tears and hugs.

August 1, 2026, was a day that reinforced the foundation of what this life is really about. Love expressed through living every day.

Here’s what I mean on a deeper level with the three dots. My wife’s aunt’s life was more than the five paragraphs on the back of the program, the family and generations in the church was evidence of what she did, how she lived.

The poems I read, and the ones I’m reading today, gave me a glimpse of the poet’s heart, of their lives. As a poet, I know the vulnerability of writing, of crafting a verse that reflects the heart.

Twenty-eight years of marriage. Our own six children, the ups and downs present in the everyday, the love it takes to build a home, to build a life. It takes time and heart.

There will come a day when someone will try to summarize my years on this earth on the last page of the program for my funeral. There will probably be some photo albums, too. And my children will share stories, and maybe even my best dad jokes or even read some of my poems. But that day will simply be the accumulation of the days I tried my best to live this life with love. Love of the written word. Love of my wife, children, and friends. Love of having ordinary days to show that love.

August 1, 2026, was one of those days…

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July 14, 2026 · 12:13 pm

Home is a Tree

I felt sorry for trees

Stuck in one place

Never exploring the world

Until I noticed that

They are closer to Heaven then I

This poem / observation was jotted down in my note app as I was on my walk. I also took this picture to reinforce the idea.

One of the reasons I like to walk everyday is the mental aspect, the way my mind can drift and be inspired by the world around me. As I continued on my walk I thought about how much a home is like a tree.

On average, most people (6 out of 10) live within 100 miles of their home town. And most of them are only 30 miles away (2022 Census).

Even wind-dispersed seeds of trees travel just over a mile, but can reach 18 miles.

I thought about how my desire to create a stable home for my own family influenced aspects of my personal life, my goals. One of the biggest aspects has been coaching, specifically football. But also my writing goals. This town is not a poetic mecca by any means.

But the thing about trees is that they are beautiful in their strength and characteristics; leaf shape, color, and their bark patterns. Trees withstand the seasons by changing with the weather. 

We have been in this particular house for 15 years. My three oldest children are out in the world, two are over 100 miles away while one is in town. I have three more children at home, one of them will be a senior and ready to make the decision of which college to attend. 

I do not know where the wind will take my children, but they know where home is. It is a strong blue house… sitting pretty close to heaven.

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July 9, 2026 · 11:18 am

Silence of Screens

This morning I stopped at The Blue Moon for a coffee, a Pooh Bear latte (part of my yearly summer challenge to drink their specialty coffees). My youngest daughter got a breakfast sandwich. We sat on the couch, chatted a little about the rest of the day. But we were mostly quiet, partly because she was hungry (just got done with morning weights) and I was people watching.

The Blue Moon is a hot spot for the older generation to gather and chat while enjoying a coffee. Every morning you can find tables brought together and groups of people talking, laughing, just enjoying the fellowship of friends.  The afternoons are more subdued, that is when I try to go and write.

This morning there were about 10 older ladies at a table beside us. Conversations flying. Across the sitting area was a young boy, probably about 10 or 11 years old. He was by himself, I figure he was a grandson and tagged along with his grandmother. He had an empty juice bottle and some crumbled up napkins on the table. But what struck me was how he was just sitting there with an iPad in front of him, the volume loud enough I could hear it, but could not catch everything that was on the screen. And he didn’t move, at all. His face was illuminated by the screen. I watched as different colors shifted on his face.

Now, I know that a young boy may not feel comfortable talking with a group of older women, I get that. Besides the idea of reading or coloring or doing something active, he was silent and did not move at all. His silence struck me,  I see the way screens silence people, even in my classroom and even my home.

Let’s throw in AI just for the fun of it… Open AI just released GPT-Live which will listen and talk to you in real time. A quote from them, “We’re launching GPT‑Live, a new generation of voice models that make talking with AI feel much more like having a real conversation.”

I’m going to let this sit for a second…

I always wondered why the cool advancements in technology always seemed to correlate to making technology more human.

And now technology wants to silence you even more to other humans. 

Yesterday we (my wife and three youngest daughters) went to Lincoln to get new tennis rackets, had lunch together, and visited the children’s zoo. Yes, we had phones, taking pictures and sharing some of them on our family group chat. We even rode the little train around the zoo. My two oldest boys added a few comments about the memories they had of the train and the zoo when they were little.  We talked at lunch and had fun getting new tennis rackets for my two middle daughters (one chose some crazy colors for her strings).

As a dad it was a great day, it was filled with smiles, conversation, and laughter.

At the moment my house is pretty silent… and yes, we are all on screens. I am writing this blog post, I can’t see the screens of my daughters, but it is the classic position; phone in hand, face blank. My wife is working on her computer. The house is silent.

I am not against technology. I am concerned about its ability to silence us in lots of different ways, and what that will cost us as a society, as a person.

I would rather enjoy my coffee in the middle of the noise of people enjoying fellowship, then sipping on it in silence, screen illuminating my blank eyes.

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July 5, 2026 · 7:49 pm

A Thousand Blueberry Muffins

I am only a few months away from turning 55. 

I have 21 years left if I live to the national age of death.

That means I have 1,092 batches of blueberry muffins left.

Time can be measured in so many different ways. Our lives are filled with milestones, beginnings and endings. At times our lives seem so routine, while at other times it feels like chaos rules. We feel anger. We laugh. There is pain and discovery. There is life.

But time moves forward. In two years I will have only one child left living at home, and less than a thousand batches of blueberry muffins to make. 

Honestly, as I consider these upcoming milestones, I am sad, reflective, and grateful that I have built a tradition that my life, my children’s life, could anchor to in good and troubled times. No matter what time has in store for me, for my family, we have at least 1,092 batches of blueberry muffins to enjoy.

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April 11, 2026 · 10:13 pm

My Poetic Philosophy

I love April. Even though life is busy with teaching, coaching, and just general dadlife, the challenge of writing a poem every day brings a welcomed level of stress. My students know I am a poet, and have asked to hear some of the poetry. I have also had the opportunity to just talk about poetry and creativity with them.

Today, I wrote a poem that was inspired by my walk. I had already composed and shared my poem for the prompt today (which was ‘home’ – you can read it on my X feed). As I reworked a section of the poem, I felt like the poem represented my basic philosophy of poetry. Now, I have written all kinds of poetry, have written in over 100 different forms, but since I have shared my creative process a number of times in the last year, I thought it would be fun to share this poem and explain how it fits my general philosophy of poetry.

Some background first. Some info from the poets I admire.

Robert Frost, states in the preface “The Figure a Poem Makes” that a poem should start in delight but end in wisdom. Later he expands on the point, highlighting how the wisdom is not always grand but the simple depth of living, that a poem “ends in a clarification of life.” If you are a faithful reader of my poems (and even my blog posts) you can see this revelation at the end of many of my works.

Langston Hughes is my favorite poet, and most people don’t know that early in his career he was criticized for what makes his work loved now, the reality of life. Lifting up the working class and street people of Harlem. And bringing them into the discussion of the social issues of our nation. But he also threaded a spiritual aspect into his work. Langston once said that poetry was “the human soul, squeezed like a lemon…” I do not write a lot about social issues, but I do try to squeeze my soul until it forms a poem on the page.

I am also a fan of the Romantic Poets, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelly and the likes. Nature and the common life were driving forces for their poetry, and mine. Which brings me to today. After my walk I sat down on my front step and jotted down the first draft of the following poem (which is presented in its final version).

“April 11, 2026”

The battle between seasons

is taking place on lawns,

yellow brown grass fights for ground

against lush green blades 

that are backed up

by bright yellow dandelions.

The air smells of a rain waiting,

a tint of mildew,

heavy and sweet.

While the wind blows 

its war horn

from the north,

cold and biting. 

Warning that freezing storms

are still possible.

The sky a grey blanket

with no seems to be seen.

—

And I am walking through

the middle of it all.

My heart holds on to winter,

while my mind yearns

for the thaw of spring.

A war between seasons

for the right to call

this day theirs.

This poem, I think, represents my voice well. The first stanza is a picture of the day during my walk. Revealing the tension of the weather during the days between the seasons. There is beauty in nature, a power that touches our souls, no matter what the weather is.

Then in the second stanza I squeezed my soul. Revealed a spiritual tension that I hope connects with the reader. A wisdom that they can read and then say, “I understand that feeling, too.” And with that inspiration to highlight the richness of our everydayness, I used the date.

The one aspect of the poem that is missing from my style is the use of a poetic form. Which I played with the idea, but the poem felt truer as a free verse based poem. And I am learning to trust my poetic instincts.

I hope you enjoyed the new poem and getting to know me a little more as a poet as I shared my poetic philosophy. Here is to a great rest of April and all the poems I will write.

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March 26, 2026 · 11:41 am

Did You Notice?

Let’s see if I can express myself well in this blog post. I know as I sit down to write this that I will be challenged in my ability to express this abstract experience with this page and the words I choose to express myself with.

Let’s start with the idea of connecting dots. Faithful readers know I use this idea a lot. But it helps make connections to ideas or moments, even when they seem random.

Dot One

Did you notice? 

Did you notice I was not there on social media, especially X? It is OK if you didn’t. I’m not sure anyone really did. My screen time is averaging 2 hours and 50 minutes a day for the last couple of weeks (at the end of this week it should be about 2 hours and 40 minutes).

At the moment, X is my 8th used app. It is even behind my Clock app. I did not disappear, I reposted, shared some info, but I didn’t really engage with people or share original content. And X went on without me.

Dot Two

Why I reduced my interaction with my phone and social media.

This is one of the tricky parts I alluded to in the introduction. I was hurt because of poetry. Rejection emails, poetry battles, and the loss of community hit my spirit hard. Every creative person goes through rough spots, the last three weeks have been brutal for me, in so many different ways. Emotionally it was like standing in the middle of a downpour as a blizzard swept in while an earthquake happened.

Dot Three

What did I gain from the last two weeks?

New Poetry. Ironic isn’t it. 

I also gained an appreciation for my voice, for my style. It sounds funny to say this at this stage of my writing career, but I am always reminded of something Ray Radbury said in an interview late in his career. He said it took him 10 years to finally write a short story that he felt reflected his authentic voice.

I may not be popular, but no one writes like I do. 

And I will keep trying to share my work, knowing that my email folder will be filled with rejection responses because that’s what we do, we create and share with the world.

Dot Four

What I really gained from the last two weeks…

The depth and quality of our life is found in how engaged we are in our own lives.

I read the article “The Lonely Death of George Bell” from the New York Times in 2015. (It is behind a paywall now.) It haunts me to this day. The quick summary of the article is that George dies in his apartment alone, and it took weeks before anyone noticed enough to investigate. Even his drinking buddies, whom he saw only at the bar, did not do anything when he stopped showing up. 

We all get 24 hours in a day. And we, for the most part, get to decide what we do with that time. I’ve talked about this idea in different blog posts for years and connected to different topics. The small shift in understanding from the last two weeks is that how we engage with that time matters.

I didn’t stop living just because I was not on X. Dadlife has been in full swing, daughters are in tennis, and my third daughter was also in the school musical. I took my walks. I wrote poetry.

Twenty-four hours can go by without us doing anything, even if we are on a screen or not. Being aware, but even more importantly, choosing what and who to engage with builds the textures of our life. Gives us the colors, the heartache, and the words to live a life we can call art.

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February 22, 2026 · 4:56 pm

Blueberry Muffins and Nothing to Do

At the moment my daughters are performing karaoke with a friend. My wife is listening to a podcast and I am writing this blog post (I did just spend 30 minutes reading a book). For the first time in a long time we have nothing to do.

This morning we had blueberry muffins. We attended church. Ran to get my wife her coffee drink (if you know, you know). Bought some yarn for my youngest daughter who has fallen in love with crocheting. For Christmas we got her a Wooble. She has completed at least 7 of those sets and is now making projects on her own. The latest being two dragons. 

It’s funny how busy you can be with nothing to do. 

It’s funny how full a day feels when you have nothing to do.

It’s funny how much we miss when we pack our days, or weekends, with things to do.

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January 22, 2026 · 10:01 am

Falling in Love with Vinyl

My stereo system, from 1991, finally just stopped working about a year ago. I had a dual deck cassette player, CD player, receiver, and six speaker set-up that was in my corner library. I did not have a record player. In fact, I have never owned a record player. Until this Christmas.

As a Christmas gift my wife gave me a Victrola 6-in-1 Bluetooth Record Player & Multimedia Center. I can listen to my CDs, tapes, and now, for the first time, listen to records. 

During Christmas break I visited our new used record store downtown to buy a LP. I was hoping for a Prince record, but they didn’t have anything at that time. I ended up buying Poco’s Legend album, which has one of my all-time favorite songs, “Heart of the Night”.

When I got home, I immediately put the record on (Side two though because that side started with “Heart of the Night”). I’ll be honest, I was excited. I dropped the needle down, heard that hollow crinkling sound and smiled. Then the first notes of “Heart of the Night” started to play… and I was hooked. 

My record collection is at five albums, and yes one is Prince’s “Around the World in a Day”. Many of the times I am just chilling on the bed when I listen to any of the albums. Those moments remind me of doing the same in my teenage years. Most of the time with my best friend at his house listening to cassettes. I remember the trips to Casper to buy music. 

The other day as I was flipping over an album to the other side, I thought about the change in our culture around music. 

Like many kids, my children listen to music as they do homework, headphones on, YouTube or Spotify playing their playlists. All my children have CD players in their room. Their music collection isn’t vast, but they ask for music as gifts. We definitely listen to music in the car, I mean we spend a lot of time traveling and we have some fun playlist we listen to.

But, what is missing in their life is the personal cost of time and care it took when I was a teenager, and now revealed in what it takes to listen to an album. 

Here is what I mean, to listen to an album I must take it out of the sleeve. Place it on the player, physically move the needle and when the side is done, I have to flip the record over. To listen to a record I know I have to invest time and care even to enjoy the music.

There is so much missing from the musical experience today. It was hard to find hard facts, but for streaming revenue a song only has to be played between 30 and 50 percent of the length. Another stat I came across was that listeners only complete 50% to 80% of a song when it is on a playlist. Completion rates were higher for album plays (GEARNEWS).

Music doesn’t mean the same to my children that it does for me. And part of the reason is that they have not invested anything in listening to music. Like anything in life, when we invest our time, our energy, our hearts, it means more to us. 

Every physical form of music, LP, CD, cassette, and even 8-track cartridge, has a physical, emotional, and time cost associated with it. Each form is unique in those costs; fastforward / rewind for tapes, dropping the needle down, switching tracks if we want to hear a certain song. 

But I think the most interesting factor is the commitment to listening. Every form can be background music, every form can be heard while just chilling in the room, but the physical forms will have a stopping cue, a moment that you have to physically change the format. Even CDs will end. But the deeper aspect is the anticipation of that favorite song coming on, even if we are using the music as a backdrop, we know that a particular song will be next, so we may choose to stop washing dishes to dance or sing along with the song.

The full experience of listening to music in physical form adds a depth to the moment that digital music usually misses or fails to create for us. And in that depth, we can remember other moments, feel a range of emotions, and share, like best friends chilling on the floor waiting for THAT song to play, a rich and wonderful time with someone.

I like digital music. Again, we have travel playlists we listen to in the car, but we don’t skip songs. We sing and, yes, dance to our favorite songs. But, my new Victrola has Bluetooth capabilities that I have not used. I would rather put a record on…

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January 4, 2026 · 5:09 pm

There will come a time

I am going to just warn you now, this post will ramble but try to connect the dots at the end.

I just finished my walk about 20 minutes ago. And I thought about a lot of things, had a lot of dots on the paper of my mind. But let’s start in the middle of my walk.

There is a small cemetery, Sunset Memorial Gardens, that I walk past on one of my routes through my neighborhood. Sometimes, I stop to sit and reflect. Today was one of those days. As I sat down on a bench the “Love Theme from St. Elmo’s Fire” started to play in my earbuds. St. Elmo’s Fire is one of my favorite movies, so it got me thinking.

I took a couple of pictures to share on social media. I tend to take unique pictures on my walk just to share. While I was taking the photos I noticed that there were two fresh mounds of dirt. One of the grave sites did not have a date on the tombstone, but the second one did.

This is when the dots filled my head.

Here I was standing by her grave on January 4, 2026. Janice was just days away from the New Year when she passed away.

I, we all do to a degree, take time for granted. I have a specific pair of shoes I use for my walks. I am in the middle of logging the steps I take on my walks in these shoes for a blog post when I get new shoes.

I am assuming I will be here in 6 months. That I will be able to walk, to listen to music, to think, and write poetry.

For my faithful readers, you know that I’ve learned 6 months can change everything (A Tweet about a Death Goes Viral).

As I continued on my walk I was deep in thought about life. A poetic line came to mind, “There will come a time…” (I’ll share the poem later in the blog).

Thinking about the poem led me to something that has been heavy on my heart lately… about how much I have failed in accomplishing my big dreams. I let myself down all the time. I have books I want to write. I want to learn to play the piano (or at least write this song I have). I want to help people write better (this is an idea in the works).

But instead… I fail.

Like all of us, life tricks us into believing there is time. And the trick is that there is time… until there isn’t. And we don’t know when that time will end.

On the home stretch of my walk, I spotted an older couple walking their dogs on the golf course, at times holding hands waiting for their second dog to catch up.

It was a beautiful site and reminded me that no one knows how much time they will have. But we are all given a life. And we do get to decide on how we live it. Failing at dreams, walking on a 60 degree January day, or making it home to be a dad…when I got home my second daughter needed help getting her boomerang (she got for Christmas) down from the roof of the house.

Some dreams are so big they have to be accomplished everyday.

Ohhh, yeah, I wrote this poem while walking too. This is the draft from my notes. The final poem will be worked on later.

“There will come a time”

There will come a time

Because of a dead watch

When I will stop moving

My hands across my face 

To check how well I shaved

To start a new day

There will come a time

Because of the sunset

That I will be encased in darkness

Like Orion

Dreams stuck in position

Of a constellation of the past 

There will come a time

Because of the last page

That I will no longer

Be able to write

A single word of a poem

Or love letter for her to read

There will come a time

Because of the rules of LIFE

I will reach the end

Have no more turns to spin the wheel

Get an action card

Have a pet

Or fill my little green car

With people I love

One last thing, here is the song that played as I came home.

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December 31, 2025 · 8:19 pm

2026 Word

Next year starts 2026. As we have done since 2015,each member of the family chooses one word for the next year. We each share the reason behind the word, and then design our display. This year we are using small wooden clipboards. 

As you can see from the picture my word is MAGIC. 

There are a number of reasons behind my choice for the word. I want to create more magical moments, which I tried to do this Christmas, actually, when Santa visited our house for everyone. There were 8 filled stockings under the tree (my six children and my new daughter-in-law and my son’s longtime girlfriend). And yes, Santa visited my wife, even if she didn’t get a stocking, she had presents under the tree.

But to have magical moments I have to be active as a father, a husband, and even as a poet. Magic doesn’t happen staring at a screen. It happens when my children laugh, my wife smiles, someone replies to a poem I wrote. 

I have some really big goals this year. Accomplishing them will be magical. Jon Finch once said, “Magic is the poetry of impossibilities, each trick a stanza in the verse of wonder.” And I am a good poet.

Here is to a magical 2026.

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