Making it up as you go along

I begin this writing project by talking about names.  I was anticipating the birth of my first child at that time, and here I am now, still anticipating that same event.  Now, of course, that anticipation is building and building as it gets closer and closer to her arrival.  Soon I'll add another title to the list that I've been building up over the years.

This week I plan on writing a bit about being a father.  It's something that I don't really know anything about.  I met my own father three or four times in my life, and I never spent a good deal of time around other people's fathers either.  I think that everyone that becomes a parent ends up making it up as they go along, but I'd like to take the week to try to get my head around some ideas.

Hopefully it'll help me to sort out some of my ideas, and maybe you can give me a little help along the way.

The Second Handle

If you ask me, names are pretty important things.  If you call it Constantinople instead of Istanbul, you're saying a lot. A little over a year from now someone will be calling me Dad instead of Cameron.  That's a pretty big change in responsibilities.  I've had a lot of names in my day, and I've given out my fair share of nicknames and received my fair share of insults in return, so when it comes to names I pay attention.  Coming up with a name for this blog took me a good bit of time.

Chance played a good part in it.  I had the good fortune of having an English teacher who made us recite the poem "Invictus" at the beginning of each and every class.  At the time, I thought that it was probably the stupidest thing any teacher had ever had any student do, but she apparently had a much deeper reservoir of knowledge than my teenage self gave her credit for.  I repeated to myself each morning that I was the master of my fate, and that I was the captain of my soul.  A decade later it would do me some good.