I've written before about the Theme's that CGP Grey has discussed and I think they're great! I've just recently completed my 'Spring of Transition'.
So what is the Spring of Transition? For me it meant focusing on that last bit of time that my daughter will be living with me and my wife full time.
She just graduated from High School and is getting ready to go off to college in the Fall. I've taken the last quarter to really try and focus on spending quality time with her, and enjoy the last bits of her living here with me and my wife.
One of the things I am eternally grateful for is that when my daughter was a baby/toddler I started a WordPress blog to keep track of all of the adventures we got into. This was 2008 - 2010 and while Facebook was kind of a thing, Instragram was NOT a thing. I used this blog to post pictures with a fun caption of the context of the picture. I would also write a monthly letter to her and recap what fun adventures we had, or what changes I had noticed.
I did this for a couple of years, but then life got in the way and the changes that she was going through were harder and harder to see, and capture, with a camera. This made it very hard to write about as well.
I ended up taking down my site, but I kept a backup of the WordPress XML just in case1 I would want to use it again.
At one point I stumbled upon a journalling app called Day One that I used to journal. I used it for a couple of years and then found a feature that allowed me to import my WordPress blog data.
I played around with this a bit and finally made the plunge to import the data. It may be the best decision I've ever made with respect to tech.
Over the last several years I focused on trying to journal every day. One of the grear features of Day One is 'On This Day'. After I journal I'll click on that tab and look back at what I've written "On This Day".
The best entries are from the blog. Small reminders of the toddler my (now) adult daughter was.
This has been especially great over the last 3 months as she has wrapped up High School and prepared for College. It's really allowed me to focus on the great times we had, and work to create some awesome new memories.
We didn't do anything exotic, or visit any far off places during this 'Spring of Transition' ... there's already sooooo much to be done at the end of a High School career!
But, I have tried to focus on the things that we do like to do.
We have watched a bunch of Star Wars:
We've also tried to watch the Battle Star Galactica TV show from the early 2000s. This didn't go well.
Another thing that we've been doing is trying to cook meals together. My daughter is a vegetarian, and my wife and I are not, so this makes dinner (and other meals) challenging.
To over come this she found several vegetarian dishes that she thought I would like and we've made them together for dinner. It's been a real treat to see what she thinks of some of these recipes, which are mostly Thai and Vietnamese meals which is not something she would typically eat (she's really big into the various combinations of cheese and starch, i.e. Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, Quesadillas, and Cheese Pizza 😊
We've also been trying really hard to get take out from a Thai place that has many vegetarian options, but haven't been able to make it work just yet. This looks to be something that we'll hopefully be able to do over the summer before she leaves for school.
I think the hardest part about all of this has been knowing that each of the things that she's done will be the last. She had her last dance recital (I've been watching her dance for 15 years). She had her last Girl Scout meeting. She had her last High School class.
Soon she'll have her last night sleeping here before she goes to school.
Obviously I always knew this day would come, but I didn't really think it would get here so quickly. The days are long, but the years are short. I never really understood what that meant until these last few months.
There is now this full grown adult living in my home ... at least for the next few months. But just yesterday she was a silly toddler walking around the house claiming that the elves must have left her milk in the pantry!
I know that her leaving for college isn't the last time I'll ever see her. I mean, she'll still have a room at our house, so she'll want to come back at some point, right? Right?
And it's not like she's going to school on the other side of the country. It's just a short 2 hour drive away. But still ... it won't be the same.
It's just all so different. My wife and I are planning to be empty nesters. Like, what does that even mean? For the last 19 years our daughter has been a part of, and influenced, the lives that we've lead.
I'm also a little nervous about my 'little girl'2 going away into the big bad world. I know I shouldn't be though. She is the most thoughtful, capable, intelligent, caring, hard working person I've ever met in my life.
I know she's going to do great in her next chapter.
I just didn't realize that next chapter would come so soon.
- this is one of the ONLY times my digital hoarding has actually paid off ↩︎
- Fun fact: she's 5'7 with the strength of someone that's been dancing for 15 years so she's not actually little ↩︎
This post is part 2 of the "2024 Theme" series: