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These last couple of weeks have been pretty wild.  First, my husband and I moved back in with my mom last week.  It takes some getting used to.  And this week, I’m on vacation.  We left during the middle of the night before this even posted.  To help make my life a little easier, my friend Gary from Skipah’s Realm agreed to do a guest post for me. (My first guest post was on Gary’s blog.)  So the Skipah’s stepping out of the box in order to help!  You might find it odd that I read his blog, after all, he’s a post-divorce, daddy blogger but he’s funny, a legendary fire maker and really cares about his daughter and makes every effort to participate in her life–even if that means driving 90 minutes one way just to watch her play softball.  Please enjoy his guest post.

Stepping Out of the Box

When I heard Unfold and Begin was taking guest applications because Miss Jennifer was vacationing on the French Riviera and sipping mimosas for breakfast (or chugging, I don’t judge), I couldn’t apply fast enough.  When I saw the box for writers and trying something new on the application, I put one of those big thumb checkmarks like you see on Facebook as my muse of choice.

First, let me introduce myself, I’m The Skipah of SkipahsRealm.com.  Childhood nickname that I haven’t been able to shake and now I’m 40 and I swear more people call me that than my given name of Gary.  I’m also one of these new fangled folks known as a “blogger.”  I don’t really blog about much:  Custody Wars, divorce, psycho ex-wife, baby mama drama, traveling, my fiance, my future stepkids, being a dad, a little bit of sponsored content to keep the lights on, and most of all my most precious topic….my daughter!  Throw in some snark, humor, and an unhealthy addiction to Diet Dr. Pepper and you are pretty much caught up to speed with my blogging career.

O.K., where was I?  I promised Miss Jennifer I would write about trying something new.  I recently tried driving the speed limit to work the other day, but ended up five minutes late.  So that phase of newness is now old news in my world.  Really you can sum my life up in two phases:  Married-comfortable in life and Post Divorced-Learning to Love Life and never saying no to trying anything.  Except for pickled pigs feet.  I will not eat them in the rain, I will not eat them on a train, I will not eat pickled pigs feet, I will not eat them, Sam I Am!  I’m sure Seuss just did a zombie like eye-roll in his grave.

The old me saw sushi and was like gross, who would eat that crap.  It’s raw fish!  I don’t care if it swam in gold plated water, it’s RAW FISH.  The new me was out on a date (before I met my fiance) one night and I let machoism get the best of me and tried sushi when she ordered us some.  I was expecting to chuck immediately in the restaurant, ruin my new shoes, and crawl out of the restaurant doing a different kind of “walk of shame.”  Something magical happened though, my palate found this new culinary delight rather orgasmic.  Next thing you know we were ordering more, and now I’ll eat sushi anywhere, except from a gas station.  Food poisoning is no fun!

I used to like to sit on the couch and watch just about any T.V. show or sporting event back in the old days.  Updated my social media status about once a year and that was if I was even on a network.  I used Twitter to basically read sports columns and to follow breaking news.  Of course, this was back before everything was breaking news, but you get my point.  The new me?  Let’s just say I’m a social media whore.  I’m on Facebook and Twitter sharing any and everything.  I’ve also got “good” friends all over the globe.  Sure I’ll never meet most of them, but after suffering through another baby mamma dirty tactic and ready to fire off a profanity-laced email to said ex-wife, I instead just reach out online and my network is there to cheer me up and keep me upright.

I could go on for days about the old me/new me phenomena, but I’m sure Miss Jennifer wasn’t wanting me to write 2600 words.  I will say the old me looked at online dating as a bunch of suckers.  I mean really dude/dudette, you can’t go meet someone the old fashioned way said the married dude of 13 years and the last time he was single pay phones still existed and pagers were all the rage.  Post-divorce going out and meeting people I learned cost money!  You know what else cost money?  Lawyers and custody battles!  Hmm, maybe I’ll give this online dating thing a try.  I mean that girl is kind of cute, wow that girl likes baseball, holy smokes Carrie Cuteness is pretty damn hot!  Initially it was kind of awkward for this shy guy to connect, but eventually, I went out on a date or two.  Met a psycho and got to be the rebound date for more than a few ladies.

Just when I was about to give up on online dating (and my one-year subscription was about up), this tall drink of water from 45 minutes away replied back to me.  I could tell she was a tad nervous and shy and would later learn her circumstances were eerily similar to mine in the funny game of life.  That was in late July of 2015, on July 1st, 2017 she is going to be my wife.

The point of all this is when life throws you a curve ball, don’t stand back and watch the pitch go by.  Take a swing at it, you might miss the first or second time, but eventually, you will knock it out of the park.  Get off your ass and go for it.  Become a blogger, go to the theater, get involved in charities, volunteer at your child(ren’s) school, just don’t morph back into the old you!

I would be remiss if I didn’t thank Miss Jennifer for letting me steal some air time on her digital love child.  Miss Jennifer and I got way back in blogger land and she will always have a seat at the Skipah’s Realm shareholders meeting, assuming I ever go public.  Now that would really be stepping out of the box!

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I hope you enjoyed Gary’s post.  If you’d like to read more from him, you can check out his blog at SkipahsRealm.com.  You can follow him on Twitter to find out the latest raves (or is that rants?) and even on Instagram.