I think it’s time to refocus.
Well, I never could get the YouTube thing down. You need like other people to record you,
good equipment, charisma, and some sort of outward appearance you know
what you’re doing. So I just left in in
the pile of “Things I Never Got Around to Doing”.
About eight years ago, after my second daughter was born, I
began to blog about being a dad. At that
point in my life it was just the four kids.
Life was crazy back then. I was
working about 60 hours a week, I tried going back to school and my wife was
trying to handle three babies and a teenager.
It was perfect gimmick to be a dad blogger. I called the blog Juggling Eric because I
struggled being the husband, father, student, son, brother, friend, Christian,
whatever with all the craziness going on at home. I got sorta semi-popular. Like the popular where you’re at your ten
year reunion and you heard that someone died and you go, “Oh. I knew that guy!”
Yeah – I was “that guy”. I dubbed
myself “The D-List Dad Blogger”.
After a while I went from Juggling Eric to “Welcome to
Boltonshire”. It was more descriptive of
what was happening at home. The blog had
moved from being more about me to about the kids and such.
Eventually, the kids got boring.
Seriously, they stopped doing thing that were post
worthy. So I changed the blog again to “Hashtag
Bolton” and made it more about me and whatever the heck I wanted to talk
about.
That didn’t last long.
It wasn’t because I didn’t have the audience (because I
never did really), it was more I was just tired of blogging. I was putting more effort into it than I was
being rewarded. And that was it until almost
two years ago.
I found a home for Middle Class Batman on Periscope and he
was a sleeper hit. I made some good
friends and people really appreciated the gimmick. Then I took a break from it. Apparently that is my modus operandi. While I didn’t broadcast all the time, I
still interacted with people almost daily.
They got to know me and my family and it’s been fun.
But I think it’s time to make some changes.
I went back to school at the end of 2015 and I’ve actually
stayed. I’m majoring in Creative
Writing. Twenty years ago when I left
school, I vowed never to go back. Well I’m
back. I realized I spent evenings doing
Periscope and looking for something to do, I could be using that for a tangible
goal.
A college degree.
I want my kids to know that even though life is crazy as
anything when you have six kids, you can still accomplish something. My wife is doing it remarkably and I’m trying
my best.
I want to write. I
want to write more. Write like I used to
when I started Juggling Eric. I have a
goal to publish my own book by my 42nd birthday this year –that’s
nine months away. So I’m going to step back from being a full time Middle Class
Batman and be a full time Eric D. Bolton who can be a Middle Class Batman. I need to get back to the basics. The goal is to make this blog a
parenting/geek blog. I plan to post a
few times a week to get back in the feel of things and appreciate what I
contribute.
So… yeah… Let’s see if I can keep it up.
As you were.
