My web presence, Boy Oh Boy, is the documentation of the processes and my thoughts on becoming a father for the first time. This blog was created before Oscar was born and follows my progress as expectant father to new father (and Oscar’s from squiggly lines on a screen to crazy toddler!).
I’ve chosen this topic for a number of reasons, the most important being that I like the idea of creating a reflective piece, created in the now, to pass onto my Oscar in the future. In doing this I hope that he will better understand his father and also, hopefully, understand how much he means to me and how his values where formed.
There are many secondary reasons for sharing this experience. Growing up in Sydney and now raising a family in Adelaide I now have family spread all over the country, and indeed the globe. This blog is a way of sharing the experience with both interstate and international family members. This stops the multiple requests for updates from everyone and allows them one-spot to ‘check-in’ on our progress and father-son adventures. Further to this, I personally have found the internet to be ‘flooded’ with ‘mummy-bloggers’ that while informative in the general sense of child rearing advice, they neglect or in some cases completely ignore the male/dad perspective. I often overhear other expectant and new fathers comment that they “had no idea what was coming” and so hopefully I can give them one or two ideas of on how to handle that from my experiences.
As an IT professional, I understand the real possibility (and have seen it happen) of losing personal data due to file corruption, viruses, or even simple hardware failure / theft. So I use this blog and other social media as yet another way to store Oscar’s childhood photos just in case this ever occurs. I believe the effect of losing these childhood of memories, forever, counterbalances any privacy concerns created by sharing these moments in public.
And finally, I think being a dad is pretty cool!
P.S. I must acknowledge Oscar's help in writing this narrative (as shown in the above photo)
