12/5/04
You have got to get serious. You can't eat the same things you've always ate, and you can't go around with the same attitude that got you through your single and destitute years.
First off, you're 25 pounds over what you were the last time you decided to lose weight. You did it before, so I'm relatively sure you can do it again. The Slim-Fasts don't work anymore, so find something else. You bought all that shit to exercise in, now fucking exercise in it.
You have to be strong enough to pick up your baby. Even when it's on the floor, and you're six feet tall. It doesn't matter that you have a slipped disc, and your back hurts all the time, just shut the fuck up already, slap on some Ben-Gay or something, and get it done. If you think you're tired all the time now, try feeding a mewling infant for the first eighteen months, you aging fratboy.
You've done a lot of the legwork on career things, but they have to go onto paper in finished form. Execute the proposal. Outline that TV show, even though right now it is a jumble of ideas that aren't fused together.
The world has no interest for you when you behave like this. Quit crying over your missed shots and get back on defense. You fucked up a perfectly beautiful day today for all the other golfers. They say narcissism is the hardest disease to treat, so you had better get cracking, asshole.
One truth about golf, you actually *can't* ruin it for other golfers. I know you tried your hardest, but if it's December and it's 54 degrees and I'm playing golf, there's enough good around to cancel you out.
But yeah, babies are heavy. And this kid'll have thick Williams-Bone DNA, so prepare yourself.
Jeez, and I thought I had a shitty "to do" list for today.
Since when did the voice in my head start posting on Ian's blog? And what did it mean by the whole TV show thingie? I think I'll go home now & outline the plot of a TV show, maybe last week's apprentice off the Tivo.
Dear Ian-
Congratulations! As I'm sure everyone has told you already, your life is about to change forever. I could write a book explaining what I mean but you won't begin to understand until your sweet baby is born.
Did you see Lost in Translation? I wasn't crazy about the movie, but the best explanation of what having kids is like came from Bill Murray when he was lying on his hotel room bed with Scarlett Johannson. It's 100 percent true. Check it out if you get a chance.
Hang in there! If I can do four, you can do one!
Julianna
Good for you! You can do it! Go Ian! Go Ian!
Looks like you have been hit with the same thunderbolt that shot me to the ground when I was pregnant. Being completely responsible for another little life makes you want to be the best person you can be, doesn't it?
I had suspected FOR YEARS that I was clinically depressed but did nothing about it until my daughter was born. After all, I was functional, "successful", and a high-achiever, right? So what if I was full of worry, humorless and miserable to live with most of the time!
Anyway, the night Helen was born, I knew that she was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and I OWED it to her to pull my emotional and psychological self together. As soon as I was allowed to drive post-partem, I donned my maternity muu-muu, dragged myself to my doctor, got hooked up with a psychiatrist, and drove home with a little bottle of Serzone in my hot little hands. Best thing I ever did! Each day when I share a laugh with my daughter and get a spontaneous hug or kiss from her, I am so glad for that moment of clarity. I am the mother I always wanted to be, (thanks to the makers of Lexapro and a little cognitive therapy!)
Good luck with your to do list. You've got a few months to pull yourself together!
pally,
i dont know you so i'll keep this short; my advice to you is to be suspecious of all of the advice you're getting. i remember this drill. i was the last among my closest friends to have a kid and as they did they all had less and less time on thier hands. now this is understandable, and i understood, but they were all miserable and sleep deprived too and they made the worst dinner party guests. little by little i stopped inviting them over on saturday night. they couldn't, for the life of them, understand why. and then, suddenly, you're one of them and they all come back slapping you on the back, welcoming you to thier club, talking and talking about thier happy feelings until you can't stand it anymore, telling you exactly what you're gonna feel. there will be a forest of sappy adjectives to hack through. there will be the smell of subtext that you won't ever be able to get out your clothes. and so i said "get out" because i didn't want to be told how to feel.
and i remember the exact moment they handed me the kid, my wife cut open in front of me on an operating table; "congrats," they all said. "are you out of your minds, I thought as I looked at my baby out of one tired eye and at my wife's liver out of the other. "Put this someplace safe, and sew her back up."
and then she came home and that first night that i stayed up with her watching c-span until the sun rose, me looking her in the eye and explaining to her that now we were stuck with each other and that we had to come sort of understanding as to how it would all work. and we did and it was great and seven years later we still talk and talk and talk and love each other while everybody else who just bought into it, all my pals who became lousy dinner guests, can't wait to ship thier kid off for two weeks at summer to camp so they can be alone at last.
you should think for yourselves is all i'm saying. family, i've decided, is the gold standard. it is great. they were all right. but just skipping to the conclusion, turning to the last page of the novel, doesn't get you very far in your book discussion group. it's gonna be okay. it's even gonna be greater than you can now imagine, but get there yourself. be suspicious of friends bearing bearing pink baby booties as gifts. that's all i'm saying.
I think Ian, you need clarification from Julianna as to how to handle one baby much less 4?!!?
Julianna, now that you have 4 children, does this mean that your broadcast career is on hold?
I hope all is well with you. 9 years doesn't seem that long does it?
All the best,
Michael in L.A., CA