When I was a kid, I was an ineffective diarist. Every post – Post? We called them entries then, ugh, stupid blogger culture has infiltrated my brain… – began as such:

Sorry I haven’t wrote for a long time. – 12/27/90
Sorry I haven’t written in so long. – June
I haven’t written in, get this, almost a year! – Undated
I haven’t written for a long while. It seems like I only take you out at times when I really need you. – Undated

I didn’t journal every day, still don’t. Wouldn’t it be cool if I had that sort of drive and discipline? I would write in my diary when I wanted to talk about a boy but the next sleepover was still a week away, kids then not being allowed to talk on the phone for hours as I imagine they are today, or when I was mad at my parents. Otherwise, the thing would sit untouched until I received a new one, committed to fill the old one before starting the new, an initiative that would last maybe a week and resulted in a lot of quarter-filled diaries. The last was completed when I first got my hands on Internet, WebCrawlered those Nirvana lyrics that had always eluded me, and hurriedly jotted them in my journal before my history teacher discovered I wasn’t researching history. Well, not distant history anyway. Speaking of distant history, did you know that WebCrawler was launched twenty years ago this year? Gross.

This website – Website? Blog? What is it trying to be? – well I’ve been about as good at maintaining it as my old diaries. I hate it. I feel guilty that I told myself I’d maintain it, but then a year of baby-making and work busy-ness and health problems and mental health problems (not the fun kind, but the crippling, crushing, too-anxious-to-do-anything-but-sit-and-worry-while-quoting-Bonanza-episodes-kind) got in the way. Okay the baby-making didn’t get in the way. Aside from what it did to my belly (and mental health!), the results of that were awesome and can hardly be characterized as “in the way,” though of essence that’s exactly what it’s done.

Website? Blog? I don’t know. This could be a landing spot for further musings about country music. I could become a mommy blahger. The important thing is I feel really guilty that I’ve done neither/nothing. I also committed that once I started paying back my student loans for, uh, “art school,” I’d endeavor to earn back monthly via writing the same income I was paying in. Just under $500. A month. Ha! I’d do this while also working my regular job. In case you’re not savvy, this would entail a lot of soul-sucking hustling. I’m so out of the loop on this stupid website that I can’t even figure out how to make a link right now. So here, WebCrawler this: http://www.putthatshitonthelist.com/2014/05/heres-what-i-make-as-freelancer.html

So, anyway. I feel guilty about this. All this. The not writing, and the shitty website, and the massive student loans, and the posthumous Cobain worship. And speaking of feeling guilty, I just dropped the kid off for a practice day at his new daycare, in anticipation of my return to work. Practice day = the two hours I could tolerate, which will come to a close in… 22 minutes, exactly. I got to this coffee shop down the road from the place, and found myself staring at photographs of some baby on the wall, as this coffee shop displays photos of some baby on its wall. I feel guilty leaving my kid at child care, but not because I think it will be bad for him or it’s wrong or whatever, but rather because I feel guilty about absolutely everything I do as a parent. What causes this? And why don’t those fucking Johnson & Johnson commercials make me feel better about it? Again with the inability to link, maybe try MetaCrawler this time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yotq4zr0dRc&feature=kp

(This commercial fills me with nearly as much rage as the baby boomers with their cheap cell phone plans in their fucking RVs. You know the ones. What will we someday call this generation? The Steal-all-the-money-and-retire-to-RVs-and-text-with-their-grandchildren-from-The-Grand-Canyon-on-their-30-dollar-cellphones-Generation that’s what.)

Here’s fucking Melba Montgomery laying a guilt trip on her kid in 1974. I figure if I don’t parent like this, I’ll have absolutely nothing to feel guilty about. Good luck with that, Nikki.

And now, I’ll guiltlessly hit publish without proof-reading any of this, so I can drive across town and scoop up my baby and feel the guilt rush in once again.