This site was established in May of 2000. Since then I have had three children, raised three children, held four long term jobs, started a company, and got grey hair—the last item was no doubt brought on by the prior four. Few things exist for that long without evolving and this website is no exception. For this reason, the archive is divided into blocks that represent each of its life stages.

I did not make this site because I had something to say. I made it to learn how to make a website. Part of that learning, at that time, meant saying stuff and creating content. So, even though I did not have anything meaningful to say, like many others of the day, I still said stuff. This means the vast majority of the content in this time frame is not worth reading. There are a few exceptions, but not enough to merit finding them--though if you can't move forward without ticking the box, perhaps this can slake your compulsion.

Several years ago, I came very close to deleting these first few years because of how embarrassing they were. But a reader (from Seattle, WA) convinced me to leave them in place. She agreed, with confident honesty, that the content is embarrassing and at times very embarrassing. But she also said it was part of the story, and for those who push through and read into the parenting years, what they will see through the various narratives is the birth of a man. In support of her observation and that gradual unfolding, each and every entry remains.

Unintentionally, this is where the first signs of more interesting content appears. Specifically so on Jan 25, 2002. That date is special because that was the first parenting-centric post I ever made on the monorail blog. The curious thing about that is it is ten months after my first child was born. If you are rightfully curious why it took ten months, it is because of a pact Marty and I made.

In the weeks before Bella was born, Marty and I visited friends in Nashville. On the four-hour drive there, we talked about the change we were about to go through. Based on what we saw in friends having kids, we agreed to make some rules for ourselves. Rule number one was no one cared about our baby except us (and our parents). There was no second rule. This is why ten months passed before I ever "blogged" about my new baby.

It is worth noting that my second baby-centric post didn't happen for another three months, on Apr 22, 2002. And the third baby-centric post happened five months after that on Sep 10, 2002. This is all to say that it's not like a switch got thrown one day and after that it was all babies all the time. I am clearly trying, hard, to honor our no-baby-talk rule but a few snuck by the goal-keeper.

If you think babies can be funny, just wait until they start saying and doing stuff. This is where things finally got a bit more interesting a bit more often. An introverted, desk-job guy with zero parenting experience will never bump into richer material than living with multiple talking and walking kids.

At some point, I obviously shed my self-mandated stigma that no one wanted to hear about my kids. The fact is, I was the one people didn't want to hear about, not my kids. And after working through that foible, the golden age of dearmitt dot com began. I, the family historian, finally found my footing and the site, its voice.

I'm starting this section a little prematurely because my oldest daughter was repeatedly described as precocious. So while she may not have been a teen per the calendar, she was a teen per our parental challenges. You could probably just as easily call this block of time "The Learning Years" because I feel like I sure took a beating through this period. Many of those moments are documented, as well as a few of the apologies. All of them are surely not in the folds here, but enough of them to reflect the learning curve being dealt with.

I started a company, ofCourse Scheduling, on August 1st 2016. I had never done such a thing before nor had I ever thought I would ever do such a thing. In those initial months and years, whenever I did something that was not company related, I thought how terrible it would be if my company failed because I was doing this other thing.

The worry continued to dominate my thoughts while we struggled to make the company viable and you can see, clearly, the impact it had on this website over the years. Given this, there is not much to see through this period as every operable neuron was given over to making me leaving a well-paying job with free tuition for my children NOT be a marriage-ending mistake. At first I tried to hold the line but for a variety of reasons, I had to set it aside.

I have always intended to return to this endeavor. In my mind, I thought I would resume it after my ofCourse adventure was done. But I think I over-simplified business ownership and have accepted there may not be the clean break I envisioned. But, ofCourse doesn't require the same sort of brain energy it did in its early days. And it really doesn't require much creative energy, which means I've got mental fuel to burn.

I'm still working out what I have planned here, and instead of iterating through what I have sketched up, I think I will let it organically unfold as inspiration becomes creation. After a theme plays out, I will likely rename this section to better reflect what happened in these months/years.