“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that"

I genuinely had no idea that the transition to becoming a single dad was going to be so difficult. I'd felt like a single parent for such a long time, so I figured everything would just fall into place. Being there for the boys though during this confusing and upsetting time has been so exhausting. Its hard enough dealing with my own confusion around why someone could walk out on their family for what seems like no reason at all, without having to also be damage control for those two very special boys in my life and the hurt and disappointment that they are feeling. Keeping busy is all I've got these days and I'm trying to desperately hold on to my passions and creativity, while keeping it together.

LEGO for me has always been so much more than a building toy, it has become a way of life in our home and a way for the boys and I to not only explore our imaginations but to also communicate with each other. Recently LEGO is the one thing that is keeping me sane of an evening, which may sound dramatic but there have been moments over the last few months where I have felt like I'm not coping very well and the evenings can be quite lonely. The rummaging, the designing, the entire process of building has become like my evening meditation and Ive started using that to build things to make the boys home more interesting. 

All the heartache aside, it has actually been pretty nice transforming our home into the home that we want and the first thing we did was to scrap the lounge and turn it into a LEGO room. It made so much more sense to actually make use of the space that we have and it has really helped the boys to look at our family home in a new way now that its just the three of us. 

The past couple of nights Ive been busy making small changes to things in the house. A couple of damaged picture frames have been replaced by frames made of bricks and (not being a fan of the main lights in the house) I decided to create some new table lamps for the house for a little more relaxed lighting (we could all do with a little more 'relaxed' these days). Opeie recently bought the Powerpuff girls kits with his pocket money and after building them they were just sitting on the shelf not doing much, so I decided to build the first lamp around them, mainly because of all the bright colours. It came out looking pretty cute and fit perfectly into the room.

Well, I'd got the buzz, so the following evening I started to build a Spider-man themed one for the boys bedroom. As I sat there clicking those bricks together it was the first time in what seems like such a long time that I really felt like myself again. Not only did the lamp come out looking really fun  but it really got me thinking of more things that I wanted to create over the coming weeks. I think it has been good for the boys to see me getting excited about something again.

Ive always had a thing for lighting around the house, especially of an evening and I can't believe I've not thought about doing this before. The great thing about building the lamps with LEGO is that if we get bored of them we can take them apart and change the theme. The boys also pointed out that we can create lamps for Christmas, Halloween, Valentines etc. It looks like this may be a new family tradition and as Opeie keeps saying 'Im glad we are are making new fun memories over the bad ones'.

As always, another amazing win for LEGO in our house, Its amazing that something as simple as plastic bricks, could have such a huge impact on us three boys.

"Then come my black days, MAD and loud. I howl. I growl at every cloud."

After a confusing end to 2017 and what can only be described as one of the worst starts to a year I've encountered, I'm trying so hard to not let recent events get the better of me. Writing was always an escape for me but in the last 6 months it has seemed like such a chore and if I'm honest I'm really having to force myself to write this as just seems like too much effort. I'm really hoping though that it somehow flicks a switch on how I am currently feeling, allowing me to get back to where I was last year, as I have so many happy things to write about. As a blogger (especially a family blogger), how you appear on the surface is so important, I never wanted to be one of those writers that is all doom and gloom. It can be really difficult at times though to write about the happy things in your life when inside that couldn't be further from how you actually feel. 

The blog has always been a happy place for me but amongst the back catalogue of unpublished posts that have been written, there is an insight into how I've actually been feeling deep down over the last few years. 

Do you ever feel like for some reason your emotions are completely out of whack?

Well that's pretty much how I am feeling at the moment and if it wasn't for the boys and close friends I honestly don't know how I'd got through to the other side with only this uneasy feeling to show for it all. One thing I have learnt from all this though, is that it's ok to not be Mr Sunshine all the time (although Ive always prided myself on being that happy guy that people generally like). We all have our 'off times' in life and I'm hoping I'm coming to the end of one of mine.