Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans

I received an email from a friend that disturbed me, so I am going to clear up a few things:

Re: this blog. It isn't my life. It doesn't chronicle my life, or India's life. It chronicles bits and pieces of it, which then get filtered through my "unique" perspective. I take the parts that are interesting or humorous, add a healthy dose of smart-ass, a dash of glibness, a pinch of douchebaggery, and then I let it simmer on "funny" for an hour.

When it's ready, I serve it to you, my dear readers. And I sincerely hope you get a kick out of it.

I started the blog as an effort to start writing.

It is something I have always wanted to do, but never actually did. People have told me for years that I should write, that they enjoy my emails & letters, blah, blah, blah. But I never really did. Unless you count ungodly briefs for summary judgment or nasty letters on behalf of clients to insurance companies.

I didn't know where to start. A book? I would love to, but just sitting down to start a book from a blank page was too intimidating to consider. So I started this blog, and told myself I would write something every day, or as often as I could.

Why a blog?

I wanted to share that writing with my friends, and hopefully entertain them, if they wanted to read it. After all, I had received enough feedback from people that led me to believe that they might enjoy it. So, to quote Joel Goodson, I said, "what the fuck," put it on the web, and sent the link to people I thought might enjoy it.

I thought it would be a nice way keep in touch with all the friends and family that are far away. Share some pictures, have some laughs, that's it.

But, as the link made the rounds, more people than I imagined started to check in on it, including a lot of people I don't even know. So, in the interest of self-preservation, I decided not to share every intimate detail of mine or India's life.

For example, I take some tremendous dumps on a daily basis, but I do not share them here. (If I have one that is life-altering, or makes me see God, rest assured you will read about it.) You get the idea.

We work. We argue. We make up. We exercise. We eat. We get lonely. We have fun. We sleep. If I play my cards right, we occasionally do other things. I take tremendous dumps. It's life, and 95% of it doesn't make it to this blog. I am pretty sure girls don't poop, though, which may be a proper subject for a post.

But along the way, I think some of you got the wrong idea, and viewed "The Dude Abides" as an unabridged autobiography.

It is not, and please do not rely on it for anything other than entertainment and a way to procrastinate at work. (Don't kid yourself. I know you better than you know yourself. I'm in your head, man.) Maybe you will be inspired to visit Montana one day by the things you read and the pictures you see. If you do, give me a call. Mostly, though, I aim to make you smile, or even laugh.

But the hell if I am going to type out some rambling, confessional tell-all and air all my dirty laundry here. I am sure it would be intriguing as hell, but I will leave that to people more psychologically stable and better suited to handle such things, like Courtney Love.

Rest assured, I am still the same fucked-up, obnoxious mess that most of you know and some of you love. Life isn't perfect...far from it. It is messy, sublime, ugly, great, horrible, beautiful and fragile. Hell, even the Mona Lisa's falling apart. Life is what you make it, and we're trying to make it as good as possible. Basically, the John Lennon quote above is absolutely true. I felt like I was running on a hamster wheel, waiting for that "rainy day" when I would finally take care of the things that were really important in life, all the while more concerned with meeting others' expectations than my own. Screw that. It was time to take a chance. A big chance. And, like the fine folks at the lottery say, "you can't win if you don't play."

Anyway, like I said before, in a more humorous, less ponderous fashion below- if you really want to know what is going on with us, pick up the damn phone or send an email. But, by all means, don't just read this silly website, and make assumptions.

We love you. We miss you. Leaving was bittersweet. We hope to see you all again soon.

And that's it for that.

We return you to your regularly scheduled programming.