A 12 Part Adoption Success Story
Part 1: Everything Changes
Some of the people that read my blog were surprised earlier this week by my decision to start winding down the “development” area of the website. There were somewhat disgruntled murmurings of “that’s the end of the blog script then”, and other such accusations. At the time I responded with a rather cryptic message about my spare time becoming more strained, and mentioned that I would write about it in my personal blog soon. Perhaps it’s time to explain.
Once upon a time I started learning a popular programming language called PHP. This co-incided with “blogging” becoming “the thing to do” on the internet. Being a self sufficient sort of a chap, I thought “I can make a blog script”, and so I did – and ended up with a website where I poured my thoughts and wanderings out every so often for the world to see (maybe no the world – maybe the two or three people who stumbled over it now and again).
One day, shortly after creating the blog script, one of my colleagues saw it and convinced me to release it for others to use – so I did. Thus began the “PluggedOut” website. Over the last few years it mushroomed to not only a blog script, but a number of other applications that were the result of me thinking “I wonder how you build one of them?” on rainy weekends. I ended up with a blogging application, a social network website, a content management system, a calendar script, and all manner of other bits and pieces.
Developing, testing, distributing and supporting the various programming projects takes time and effort – far more than I probably notice or realise, because I enjoy doing it. However – and we finally get to the title of this blog entry – my life is about to change, and that will mean the free time I have been using to fiddle with programming from home isn’t going to exist for too much longer.
You’re wondering why…
Over the last few years we have been trying to start a family – spectacularly unsuccessfully it turns out due to a complicated sounding fault in my genetic makeup. We threw science at the problem in the form of IVF, and after a couple of years, many thousands of pounds, far too many drugs, an attempt that very nearly worked, and more stress than is probably healthy we decided to do something we talked about before we got married.
We are going to adopt children.
At the moment we are about two thirds of the way through the adoption process – we have had background checks done on our life, family, and friends, criminal records checks, and various visits from social workers. Over the next month we will be going on several preparation courses, and then early next year our life will be changed forever – we will (hopefully) become parents – very probably of more than one child.
It is both scary and exciting at the same time. Our house will no longer be the big old empty house that we battle with – it will be the big old noisy, untidy, but ultimately happy house. I confidently predict that any concept of spare time will vanish – all of our energies will be poured into giving our adopted children the best second chance we possibly can.
And there you have the reason for me stepping back from the various activities that have filled my spare time thus far. Hopefully those who have used the code I have churned out will have the same sentiments as the Douglas Adams book – “So long, and thanks for all the code”…
Of course – this blog will continue – it will just begin to cover the various adventures of becoming a parent. Its going to be an awfully big adventure.
About the Author
