First I have to thank the blogdom out there. Thank you, blogdom. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be able to come up with half the material on this blog. I’m getting good about reading something that strikes a spark, I blog about it, then save it as a draft, and several weeks later post it after the burn and afterglow of the seminal post I read elsewhere has long since subsided. Makes it look like I thought of this all by myself. Intellectual integrity is not spelled with an ‘I’. At least around here it isn’t.

But this one can’t wait. There’s a smoldering poker cauterizing my ass and I need to extract it.

I have some hopes for this blog. I hope that some day far in the future this blog will serve as a way for me to remember the things that were going on with my kids and wife as we traveled along what has become the best adventure I’ve ever experienced. Like a photo album with bad grammar annotations.

I hope this blog will someday serve as a kind of road map for life for my kids. I haven’t blogged much about the lessons learned in business and in Corporate America, or my observations on life, but those days are coming. I think those posts will in all likelihood suck for someone coming here looking to be entertained, but whatever. I need to make this thing more about my kids than it has been so far.

I hope this blog will someday become popular. I’m certain I’ll never be the male version of Dooce, but maybe there’s an audience out there for my kind of shtick. And if it can earn some revenue from it’s popularity, even better. I mean, I don’t need to earn so much that I wipe my ass with twenties. Singles is fine.

But something this blog is not: It is not a place for me to air the differences I have with Diane. Frankly, I don’t understand the people that do. Maybe they’ve never spent any time in a corporate setting, having learned from the experience that comes from bad mouthing someone to others, only to end up having that person as their new boss. Or the person ends up having the ear of your current boss. Or maybe you have a project you need to drive through and the linchpin is this person you’ve been denigrating. If you’ve been in the white collar world, you know that there are grudges, and they can be held for years. In my previous career I held onto a few, and lived to totally fuck a couple people who needed a good fucking.

I love Diane. But equally important in our raising of these two awesome children we have is respect. I have a world of respect for Diane. She is the Yin to my Yang. The Ben to my Jerry. The Wonder Twin to my, uh, other Wonder Twin. I don’t mean to brag*, but we’re both brilllliant. But we’re brilliant in different ways. I have areas of expertise that surpass Diane’s, but she kicks my ass in other areas. I value her opinion in every topic, whether it be business or personal. And I trust her judgement. But the thing is, her judgement many times is different from mine. Does it mean she’s wrong? I’m wrong? To each of us, at the moment of impact, maybe. But we figure out a way to work it out. Sometimes it ain’t pretty, but we figure out a way.

I have way to much respect for her to ever consider insulting her on this blog, airing out what I would consider spousal or parental errors, so that I might feel better about myself. Like somehow a bunch of people I’ve never met, reading only my side of the story, can validate my feelings so that I can puff out my chest and march up to her and proclaim Her Wrongness, because 7 out of 10 commenters agreed with me.

That’s chicken shit. If you have an issue with your spouse, take it up with your spouse. Settle it with your spouse. At a minimum your spouse deserves that. If you can’t, then maybe there are some mutual respect issues you need to work out between you. But bitching about it on a public blog is not going to make it better.

For all of my ambivalence about Heather Armstrong’s blog, one thing I’ve never found on Dooce is textual acid spat at her husband. Hurled keys and milk cartons, maybe. But never “look how stupid my husband is.”

So to recap: If you regularly air out your spousal complaints for validation among a biased jury, or maybe just for the entertainment of a few blog readers, you are not a blogging hero.  You are Chicken. Shit.

Have a nice day.

*Lie