What day is today?
It's Life on the Swingset's birthday!
What a day for a birthday!
Let's all have some cake!
Weren't we just here? Didn't we just do this?
The myth that time moves faster as you age I think is just that. I think it's that we see more, do more, are busier, lead lives bursting at the seems with stuff. I certainly do. Sometimes when my life is full, it's to be a distraction, as I suffer from very real depression at regular intervals. Other times my life is so full that I can't even take it, I get panic attacks and need to scale back.
“Way to begin the birthday post, Coop. Do you need to go back to bed?”
I think I've gotten better at balance over the years, though it is still a game of mild overcompensation in either direction that leads to a bit of a wobble. Like this planet we're on, wobbling around the sun year after year after year.
And then we die.
No! I promise, it's not going to be that kind of post. Morbid and sour. I also promise this won't be a nostalgia ramble, because, well, I've done that.
What it will be, is a marvel at the very real fact that my beloved Swingset, specifically this website, was literally born six years ago today. I did what I still do, which is realize that the only thing that will get me moving, get The Swingset moving, is having something already on the line.
It'd be another month and a half before the podcast was ready, and that podcast was the whole reason for the site after all. But the day we put LifeontheSwingset.com online for the first time, launching it with my lost to the ages (for very good reason) review of Opening Up, we turned up the heat on this project. Dylan and I now had to deliver a podcast, in short order.
I don't know why we especially felt that way, considering that even once the podcast had launched we only had maybe 20 visitors, most of them friends, a good percentage on the podcast or connected tangentially. But it worked. The premature launch, with a 200 word review, pushed us to actually make this goofy idea a reality.
And now I sit six years later and pontificate.
This site, this podcast, you readers, Cooper's Republican Friends, it all means so much to me. It is the realization of a vision, the realization of something very specific that I wanted and lacked. It is a community. We're working on upgrading the back and forth a bit, as it's often more of a loud speaker than a dialog, but we've all come together and reinforced what I've always believed are the best ideals that this hedonistic swinging lifestyle can aspire to.
Safety, family, community, support, and friendship.
It's never more apparent to me than when I step through the sliding glass doors of Desire Resort and Spa every year, and see what it looks like when our specific community, when The Swingset, gets ahold of it. It changes, it grows, and it becomes the kind of place that I am incredibly proud to call home.
The Swingset isn't me, or Dylan, or Ginger, or Miko (though she surely keeps it running) – it's all of you. A community isn't about the “community leaders,” it's about the people who put forth of themselves and their ideals, it's about being there for each other, it's about support and love.
So, don't thank me, this year. Year 6. (In one more I'll be fighting Voldemort.) Thank each other. Because you are The Swingset.
Thanks for swinging by.
