It makes about as much sense as a David Lynch movie, an Expressionist painting, the inexplicable popularity of Alec Baldwin or the words “Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama”, but the past few weeks I have submerged myself into redesigning SKOS — a blog I’ve neglected to regularly update for so long that I’ve driven away practically every long-time reader.

So why am I doing it? Why don’t I just pour my energy into, you know, ACTUALLY BLOGGING?

It’s my way of coping, I suppose. As I mentioned recently, there is a lot going on right now with my family. If you add the fact it’s December, a month that tends to shine a spotlight on your life (if things are going well, it’s the greatest time of the year; if not, it can be the most depressing time of the year), you have a recipe for what I like to call “Craptacularly Humorless Blog Posts.”

And since this is a humor blog, craptacularly humorless blog posts aren’t exactly ideal. So, instead, I’ve poured my energy into redesigning SKOS from the bottom up.

It’s what I do, for those who didn’t know.

I am a website designer.

I spend my days developing professional, simplistic, BORING websites for the government. This fact is why I designed the blog you see now the way I did.

I wanted something that looked amateurish. Something that was anything except simplistic. I wanted something that was the polar opposite of boring.

Of course, after looking at it every day for almost two years, I’ve grown tired of this design.

In its place I am designing the cleanest, most minimal (without being plain), user-friendliest blog it is within my skill set to create.

Methinks the user-friendly design will be appreciated, if my readers ever return.

So, that’s what I’ve been doing. With any luck, the redesign will be online before the new year. And if I’m really lucky, I’ll figure out some way to stop time before the new year, too.

You see, my birthday is on the horizon. I’ll be 32 — a fact that boggles my still-thinks-it’s-18 mind. In the here and now, I believe I am in the prime of my life. I feel young and vibrant. And I am young and vibrant. But I also remember what I used to think of who were the age I’m at currently.

When I was 18, I considered 32 to be ancient.

I remember back in 1996, there was a Sheryl Crow song called “Home” on the radio. One of the lines in the song alluded to her being 32. I remember thinking, “Gosh, Sheryl Crow is old!”

(In related news, since 13 years have passed, gosh Sheryl Crow is old!)

Now that I’m about to be 32, I realize those thoughts were silly. Still, I can’t believe I’m about to be 32. And it’s kind of surreal. When I was 18, where I envisioned I would be in my life at 32 was very different than how it actually turned out.

I assumed I would be married. I assumed I would have one kid, possibly two. I assumed I would have a nice house with a yard large enough for my own baseball field. (Yes, at 18 I thought this would be the coolest thing ever.)

But none of those things have happened for me yet. I’m still single. I have no children. I’m renting and my yard isn’t even big enough for a softball field.

At the same time, at 18 I never thought I would have a Master’s Degree. At 18 I thought my only real skills were catching, throwing and hitting a baseball. The notion that I could become a teacher, a writer or a website designer (though at 18 I didn’t know such a thing even existed) seemed unrealistic.

At 18, I didn’t even know how to balance a checkbook. Today, I am a financial wizard with no debt, sizable savings and even more sizable retirement account.

At 18, I was a horrible driver. Today, I’m the greatest driver in the world. (Unfortunately, I still have no sense of direction.)

In almost every way, where I am at in my life at age 32 is far better than “me at 18″ could have envisioned. I’ve done very well. I’ve been very fortunate.

Still, on most days, I would happily trade my awesome driving skills and healthy retirement accounts for the ability to backspace over the words “still single.”

I would also trade them for a baseball field in my back yard.

Yes, that would still be the coolest thing ever.