Slowly, a grey-bearded man steps up to an old, familiar microphone and taps it.

Um. Hi there.

**feedback squeals**

Yeah, I know.

It’s been quite some time since I started tapping out a blog post. And some of you might have noticed that the digs are quite different from how they looked in the past. This is due to a few things.

First, and most importantly, back when I created BumbleDad.com, there was no dating app with a uncomfortably similar name. (Seriously. I got some strange emails, man.) This time around, the likelihood of “Vermontism” being somehow associated with singles that are wookin pa’ nub on the Internet seems…well it seems unlikely at best.

Second, and this one’s slightly more personal, I’m simply a different guy than I was back when I started this thing. The obvious eponymous geographics aside, if you scroll back through the history here, you can read in the margins someone trying to come to terms with a significant and unexpected change to his life. Specifically, the transition to being a “Special Needs Dad.”
Can’t say that I still feel entirely comfortable wearing that uniform, either. Not because I feel any shame in it, or that I’m somehow averse to the role, but because it tends to come with all manner of expectations, assumed limitations, and/or pity. Mark it zero for my interest in those, Dude.

Third, and perhaps least interestingly, I don’t know just how public I want to make this. While it’s possible that I’ll decide this little plot of land should welcome a wider audience, right now I just want to write into something because…I need to do it.
Always have.
When I don’t, I tend to drift off and fill that void with an unhealthy amount of professional obsessiveness and/or a rapid fire assimilation of randomly assorted hobbies. (I mean, more than usual.)

So, where does that leave us?

Well, I am going to talk about our lives and misadventures up here in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont (thus, you know, the name). I’ll talk about the impressive series of farming failures that I continue to string together on the regular, and the random successes that keep me sane in the process. And it’s likely that, this time, I’ll have more to say about being a dad to a wonderful little girl who also happens to have autism.

I make zero promises about the frequency of posts, nor the amount of content I’ll actually produce here. I do have a full-time job that pays our bills and takes up a solid 50+ hours of my week.
But, I’ll give this a shot.

Welcome back, everyone.

j.s.