I can’t stop watching.

Hey Journal. I can’t stop looking at the analytics page on the dashboard of my website. It tells me how many views came in last week, where they come from, what entries are more popular than others. I care about those numbers. Those figures are really important to figure out my next steps. They tell me if I am gaining traction. Though it is important to me in the context of my career, I’m trying to figure out why I can’t stop looking at it.

Okay, now that I’ve adjusted in my chair, I’ve fully sunken into the shrink’s couch inside my head. Journal, I can’t afford going to a therapist. You don’t mind asking me “How do you feel about that?” every once in a while, to let me know you are still there, do you? No? Great, thank you. I’m parked on the side of a street in a 10- year old suburb, waiting for Kimmy and the kids to get out of their co-op. I can’t help but wonder why I am here, waiting. Why? Why do I have this particular life? I should be well into the afterlife by now. Why did I get a second chance? Why did I take it? Am I doing enough with it? I keep checking the time on my snappy new Apple Watch, but I miss my Casio f91-w. I didn’t have to charge my Casio. I wish I could wear the Casio, but it can’t detect Pre-ictal arrhythmia like a gaudy smartwatch can. I miss when I had regular friends. When I didn’t have to wonder if they weren’t signing onto the epilepsy forums because they were dead. I miss when I didn’t get memos from other mutual friends that someone, I’d known over the internet for several years died six months ago from the same thing that I have.

Though I love the life that I have, the people in it, the activities I enjoy. I fear at times I will be caught up with. My doctor says that I am doing just fine. I am. He is not wrong. My seizures, after being half a decade post op and being on medication, have indeed been halted. But that medication, it’s almost as if I put another monkey on my back to keep the first in check.

Journal, what does someone do if they have everything in the world that they’ve consciously prayed for? I prayed for a life… I got a life. I prayed for someone to share it with. Kimmy came knocking about a month later. I prayed that I would never have to do scouting or father son campouts again in my life, and I got two of the most beautiful and perfectly amazing daughters who will soon provide an unlimited supply of Samoas and Do-si-dos. So, what do I pray for? What do I need? What makes me different? What do I do with this?

They are coming out now. My 3-year-old daughter in her red knee length dress. Kimmy in her maroon blouse, dark jeans and black Saltwater sandals, and my little 9-month-old. in her purple shirt, jeggings, bouncing up and down in her mom’s arm. I know it’s less dangerous to ask the wrong questions, than to question the right answers, but as my family walks closer to me, I’m starting to think the answers lie in them.

What makes me different than all of my friends who have gone downhill, or have even died? My family. I have one that I need to live for. What do I need? I need them. I need the family I’ve created. I wasn’t in the right place to start one. It wasn’t great timing. But a blessing like them… well, I don’t think god does layaway for things like that. Though I started off on the wrong foot when setting up my family, I can’t live without them now.

What do I do with all of this? That is perhaps the most complicated and heavy question of them all… I don’t know, Journal. I don’t know what to do. I know that I have to keep going forward. I need to keep writing. I need to keep living. But I don’t know quite what to do. Though I have the responsibility of a grown man, I feel like a lost boy. I haven’t handled adult life well thus far. I’ve been filled with a concentrated and condensed version of an emotion I experienced in grade school when I procrastinated my work to almost the point of no return.

Now that feeling is paralyzing, and for different reasons. I haven’t been screwing off. When I should have been doing my homework, I’ve been screwing up when I should have been succeeding at navigating life. My identity as a father and husband will be evaluated and tested soon. I’m cramming desperately to build my character to meet those roles. The only thing of any substance that I have found in myself is my soul. I care about people. I am good with emotion (for the most part). I’ve spent my entire life alone with my thoughts. My mind is all I have. I have to create a world, a home for my family. My mind is the foundation. I’m willing to do anything to make this foundation strong enough to hold that house. It has to. I am out of time to try things that my heart isn’t in- things I know in the back if my mind will fail. This won’t. I won’t.

I miss the point in my life where my watch only told me the time. Maybe, if I listen… I will learn more from my new watch— a watch that is connected to my heart.