Nickerblog

Baby Mantis

If Wil is right, then this is a good sign:

I lose, you win.

Apparently, I'm going to leave this site here for a while. 

I can't promise I'll post much, or that it won't change quite a bit, or that it's the right decision to halt razing this place...

but apparently I'm one of those assholes that threatens to pull the plug on a dumb blog, and then gets talked out of it. 

The exact kind of asshole I hate.

Anyway, lots of people sent me good reasons not to shut it down forever.  I was humbled, and now I've listened. 

So, thanks. I don't mind if some of you decide to bail on principle.  I would too.

Let the ridicule begin.

the end

Well folks, time to shoot this old horse.  Thanks to all for reading, commenting, and caring.  I'll still be lurking, but I'm afraid I've run out of things to say and seem to have lost the urge to say them.

I'll leave everything here for a couple of weeks, but then Nickerblog.com will point to shanenickerson.com (which, as of now, is nothing).

It's been fun.  Thanks especially to those who were along for the whole ride. 

SN

wormhole

Just for fun, let's take a trip back in time to THIS.

Why does it still make me laugh?

Andrew Olmstead

Andrew Olmstead, a US soldier and blogger, was killed in action yesterday.  Here is an excerpt from his final blog entry, written just in case he didn't make it back home:

I'm dead. That sucks, at least for me and my family and friends. But all the tears in the world aren't going to bring me back, so I would prefer that people remember the good things about me rather than mourning my loss. (If it turns out a specific number of tears will, in fact, bring me back to life, then by all means, break out the onions.)

It's a devastating read, but an almost necessary one. 

miracle

My four year old daughter, Lucy, is finally asleep tonight.  It is the first Christmas Eve that she really understands, and the first that my wife and I have actually had to prepare for.  Tonight, we surprised her with some flannel pajamas that "Santa made a special trip to deliver early" for her.  It's a tradition that my wife and I coincidentally both shared as children: new PJ's on Christmas Eve, from Santa.  Each moment of this season reminds me of my own childhood, and the excitement that she cannot contain is an echo of the excitement I still feel for a holiday that I keep thinking I've grown out of. 

I once wondered back in December, 2003:

"I'm a bit worried about telling Lucy about the whole Santa thing when she gets a little older. Isn't that just a giant lie that we'll be feeding her? Same with the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy and all of the other crazy magic things that deliver treats. Isn't it weird to lie to your kids? They're so trusting and you tell them these CRAZY stories. I'm sure we'll do it, but it sure seems twisted."

Tonight, I understand.  Kids want to believe in Santa Claus.   My parents kept Santa Claus alive for as long as we allowed them to.  Even when my brother and I knew; even when we'd found the "Walkie-Talkies" hidden in their closet, opened them, played with them for a couple of months, and then carefully replaced them in their original packaging a couple of nights before Christmas; even when all of my friends told me they knew FOR SURE that Santa was a lie, we believed.  We believed in the way that people believe that "everything happens for a reason."  We believed in the same way that people believe in Karma.  We believed because the fantasy of some kind of holiday magic was far more enticing than the reality of what was most obvious.

Tonight, as my wife and I wrapped presents, helped Lucy lay out some cookies and milk for Santa, carefully filled the space beneath our first Christmas Tree in our new house, and stuffed her stocking full of toys and treats, I felt a renewed love and admiration for my parents.  I have nothing but wonderful memories of all of our Christmases, and even though I can still remember staying awake long enough to hear my father hauling toys out of the attic to place beneath our tree, I can also remember convincing myself that Santa supplemented the presents with special ones that he delivered himself.  I believed it because I wanted to believe it.  It made more sense than trying to grow up faster than I was ready to.  Not believing in Santa meant seeing things I wasn't quite ready to see.  I opted for the fantasy instead of the more loaded reality.

Much has been written of Christmas and of Santa, and so often, people look for holes in the holiday, or ponder the "true spirit," or lament that we've lost the actual meaning of it all.  I choose to embrace the good inherent in the Christmas season.  It is love and family and memories of wonderful, magical things.  It is anticipation and reward, and belief in something bigger, whatever that may be. 

This Christmas, our first as a family of five (if you count the dog), I am complicit in the perpetuation of Santa Claus and all that he represents.  It is a lie, to be sure, but it is a lie that children want to be told; a lie they will remember fondly; a lie that I hope they one day tell.  My excitement for tomorrow is rekindled by the anticipation of seeing my daughter's eyes light up when she rounds the corner to see all of the presents under the tree.  After spending the night preparing for Christmas day, I am thankful that my parents let me believe for so long.  It is a belief I've never quite let go of, even as I eat the last bite of "Santa's" plate of cookies. 

I made sure to leave crumbs and a note as proof for Lucy. 

Hey...it worked on me. 

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Ho Ho Ho to all.

zen

(click to enlarge)

By the firelight, in the most comfortable chair, my son and I are at perfect peace.  I wonder how this world existed for me, without him.  I reflect upon all of the decisions in my life (good, bad, and seemingly irrelevant) that led us to this moment, and I'm thankful that I have been so lucky.  I am humbled by the scope of the miracle of new life.  Again, my perspective has changed in ways I never knew I needed.  I could stare at his tiny, monkey head for hours.  In fact, I do. 

v.2

It occurred to me as I as I played my jillionth game of Halo 3, sprawled out on the couch, with a newborn baby asleep on my chest, that I could probably never get back to blogging regularly.   After all, it's now been months since I posted with any kind of consistency, and I'm a firm believer in walking a dead weblog out to the pasture and putting a courtesy bullet into the back of it's head.  Find a nice spot in the grass, distract it by pointing out to the wonderful internet, talk softly about all the html you'll feed it someday, and pull the trigger as it dreams of the bunnies and the blog entries, George.  I'm telling you, I was in the pasture, lying about bunnies with a gun to the back of this blog's head...

...when I had an idea.

Now, don't get too excited.  I've got a ton of ideas.  In fact, people that know me will tell you that I've always got some grand plan that I'll probably never follow through on.  I'm a big talker, and then I lose focus and concoct some other scheme to occupy me.  It's so much easier to HAVE great ideas than it is to actually EXECUTE them.  Not only am I a Jack of all Trades, Master of None, I am also easily distracted...

Wait, where was I?  Oh right, the idea...

My wife and I had our second kid on Wednesday, November 12.  He's a cute little guy, I have to say, and we decided to name him Zach. Zachary Ellis Nickerson, to be exact.  Great initials, huh?  ZEN.  His monogramming will be very uh...peaceful, I guess, if he ever gets anything monogrammed.  Do people still monogram stuff?  You know what's weird?  "ZEN" isn't in the Scrabble dictionary.  Doesn't make sense. Sorry, I keep getting off track.  It's been a while since I wrote.  I blame rustiness.

SO, back to my idea.  I think maybe from here on out, this little nick of the web will be a blog about my experiences as a dad.  I thought once, when I first started writing this blog, that I might one day try to compile and publish my best anecdotes and snippets from here. Looking back over my scattered entries, I realized that:

A) Nope.
B) Too scattered.
C) No consistent focus to tie everything together.

Since Zach was born, I've been inspired to write several times.  It's a feeling I haven't had about blogging in a long time.  So, I'm going to see how long I can write entries related to being a father of a 4 year old and a newborn.  My favorite entries were always the ones about Lucy, or my memories as a kid, or a combination of both.  I think I'd like to try to write like that all the time.  Who knows, maybe some day I can write a book like MM. I'll need a grammar pass on it from someone who actually knows where commas go, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it (comma after bridge?  I still don't know.)

"So Shane, you're a 'daddy blogger' now?"

Well, the term kind of sucks, but for lack of a better one, yeah, I guess so.  Parenting is a never-ending source of content that inspires me to write, and matters to me.  It doesn't mean that I won't share some of my own experiences from time to time, and it may end up going the way of all the other things in my life I never finished, but let's see how it goes.

That is, if anyone is still here. 

Wow, was that an echo? 

Man, I have been gone a long time.

My GOD.  IT'S BRILLIANT.

xbox time

Why did I just NOW get an XBOX 360?  Man, this is fun.
What's your gamertag?