It's not you, it's me. I mean it

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I've indulged the introverted part of my personality a lot lately. And by lately, I mean since we brought The Kid home to live with us a year ago.

There are a lot of reasons. It takes time to find your way as a family, so we spent a lot of time early on learning about each other and how the three of us  would react. Gladys and I have workaholic tendencies, so learning what work projects we have to say no to in order to have time as a family is a learning curve with an impossibly long horizon. I've also been learning to deal with the exhaustion that comes with being the parent of a toddler.

Throw into that mix the normal pressures of colds, work travel, vacations, potty-training, dog walking, teaching The Kid not to jump on the dog and keeping our daughter on a regular sleep schedule. When you add in the passing of my mother in-law, the wind was really knocked out of my sail.

As a result, I've missed a lot. I've kept up with many people on social networks, and I've stayed in touch with a few friends who have been dogged in their pursuit of my time. But I am clearly out of touch, and I've been mourning that connectedness lately.

I've let phone calls go unreturned, text messages unanswered and emails unopened.

So, I'm trying to indulge the extrovert in me a little bit more. This means spending more time with the people I enjoy and making time to be more engaged in my community. It means answering more emails, returning more text messages and getting over the loathing I have of phones.

This might take awhile, so please be patient. I assure you, it's not you, it's me. I mean it.

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