The End? July, 2018

I’m on a plane, flying over the Western Slope of Colorado on a classic, hazy summer day, light and airy clouds playing under the wing like wispy dolphins, the high sun baking the tan expanses of farmland and prairie below us.

One of my closest friends is getting married tomorrow morning at City Hall in San Francisco, and I’m excited to be with him as he takes this next big step in his life.

Christopher and I met 16 years ago because my baby sister saw a craigslist ad for an editor to help launch a local magazine. She sent me the link because she thought it would be a fun project for me. At the time, I was still youth content editor at The Denver Post, and the thought of working on a side hustle sounded compelling.

So we met up at a coffee shop downtown and Christopher shared his plans with me. He had this hip, visionary, non-stop patter; a sort of stream-of-consciousness cadence that was wildly brainy and charismatic. Like an urban prophet about to break big.

A couple of months later, I was putting final edits on our first issue of 16:9, a monthly magazine dedicated to the film scene in Colorado. In that short amount of time, we’d recruited a talented team of designers, writers, and film aficionados. We didn’t manage to keep the mag afloat for very long, but we spent long hours working together, ideating, brainstorming, even planning an epic launch party, and building a print and an innovative web version of the project. And when we finally had to say sayonara to the magazine, the most concrete thing we had left to show for our efforts was a true friendship, forged by our hard work and shared goals.

Shortly after my divorce a few months after that, Christopher went through a major relationship/life transition himself and ended up living in the finished basement suite of our Big Blue House, his lovable Bernese a cuddly companion for Simone. We were a couple of hapless, newly single dumbasses, and it was a comfort to share space while we sorted out our lives.

Eventually, Christopher made his way out to SF and ended up living with my baby sister for a few years (after her own divorce), and they became close, too. He’s more like a member of the family than a mere best friend.

Christopher was there when I started living out the Dating Dad stories, and he was there when GeoParent and SheKnows.com first asked me to write a regular column for them, sharing the joys and humiliations of my first forays into single parenting. Our struggles became my stories — both of us in the dating scene, both of us stuck in the suburbs, both of us not sure if we had the ability or the wherewithal to actually make it all work.

We’ve both been through quite a few strange and thrilling and frustrating experiences in the decade and a half since then.

So it’s fitting that I’ll be hanging out with him while I question the direction of this blog and of my whole Dating Dad online persona.

If you haven’t noticed, I haven’t been publishing here consistently. For nearly fourteen years, I’ve posted a long-form column every single month. I’ve shared my parenting challenges and treasured moments, dating gaffes and near-misses. I’ve navel-gazed about my life and my future and my family and my persistent singleness.

But, lately, it seems like every new column has been about Simone’s upcoming move to college, and my struggles as I try to wrap my mind around what will happen next — for her, and also for me.

It’s pretty much all that’s on my mind.

My life is changing in a big way, but that’s all I know for sure. By November, I’ll likely have settled into a new routine, hopefully traveling more often, writing more books, hanging with friends, focusing on keeping the business going, and maybe, you know, finding some lasting romantic connection.

I feel like I’ll have one or two months of stories left in me as I work through the big transition. And then what?

Will I still be “The Dating Dad” if my daughter doesn’t live with me anymore?

The truth is, so much of my identity is wrapped up in the last 15 years of my life — and it’s a life I wouldn’t have recognized as possible in the midst of the sadness and confusion of those early months, when Christopher and I would drink Guinness and play Halo into the night. The carousing balanced by the quiet parenting nights. The lifestyle and career choices based on the commitment to be present as a father. The forced decisions and inconsistent prioritization of how to spend my limited off-duty nights and weekends (balancing friends, dates, work, travel, and on-the-couch pj days).

Writer Mark Manson recently shared an older post he wrote about four life stages, and though I love the guy’s writing and outlook on life, I felt like his take was a bit too linear (and judgmental) for me. I, myself (at 50, for fuck’s sake), am about to go through a massive “reshuffling of life’s priorities,” and it leaves me both excited and nervous. 

And I can’t help wonder if that reshuffling should include a hard look at my reasons for maintaining this blog.

Will I let it die as I shrug off my old weekly routines, or will I have new and exciting stories to tell? As I focus my creative energy back to writing novels and into a new, food-related project that’s been germinating in my brain, should I consciously wind it down and move into a new direction?

I don’t know.

In two weeks, Simone and I will drive a rental car packed with clothes and essentials to her new city, and we’ll move her into the dorms. At some point in that process, I’ll kiss her goodbye, hug her too long, and find my way back to the Airbnb where we were staying. The next morning, I’ll take an early, solo, one-way flight back to Denver, then make my way home.

The house probably won’t feel all that different from when Simone isn’t normally there.

But at some point, probably that Wednesday, when I’d normally get her back, I’ll start to really feel the change — no more parenting on Wednesdays and Thursdays. No more on- and off-duty weekends. The days and weeks will roll together without the satisfying punctuation of my child being home with me.

I’m going to need some new hobbies.

Comments

[Tante Fran]

Eric, parenting changes when your kid goes off to college or leaves home to be more independent but you will still get phone calls or texts about silly and serious things. You will ask lots of questions and on a good day will get wonderful and sad stories, Her new life will fill up your thoughts and heart. You will float through this next part of your life journey.