Steven Easton

It's Been Awhile

Tuesday, April 30

Wow, it's been awhile--Hi.

For those of you who don't even remember me, my name is Steven Easton, and I'm a 29-year-old middle school English teacher. My 11-year-old niece, Ava, is living with me because I have full custody of her. (Long story short: my sister robbed a bank.) Ava is awesome though and makes everyday a delight. I'm also engaged to an amazing girl woman, Morgan, and we are getting married in June.

Two years ago today, I started writing a daily blog of my life and consistently stuck with it for six months. It was a lot of fun, but it was also crazy because in the six months that I wrote the blog, I moved from Alabama to Iowa, remodeled my house, reunited with my biological father, started teaching at a new school, got into some ugly arguments, lost the person who showed me how to be a man, and fell in love all while raising Ava. I also ran a YouTube channel, but after finishing the blog, I realized I was too busy with school, coaching Ava's basketball team, and dating Morgan. Yep, a lot has happened in the last eighteen months, and a lot is about to happen, so I think it's time for another daily blog for the next month.

It's crazy to me to think that two years ago we were still in Alabama in one of the poorest districts in the state, maybe even the United States, and now I'm working in one of the richest districts in the state of Iowa, but even that is about to change. Stay tuned...

With all that said, there's not a day that goes by that I question whether I made the right decision by bringing my family of two up here because it hasn't been easy on Ava. As she has gotten older, I see more and more of me in her, which terrifies me more than words can describe. She has friends in school, but about once a week, she comes home, complaining about how some of her best friends are being mean. Sometimes, they leave people out, and she doesn't know what to do. Other times, they leave her out. Morgan says it's just the way girls are at that age, but seeing her so upset bothers me.

Also, two years ago at this time, I didn't even know Morgan. Looking back on the blog, when I met her, I knew that she was the one. More details on that to come, as well.

I had been debating whether I would like to write this blog everyday for the rest of the month, but we do have a lot of things going on that I know a lot of you would pretend to be interested in, so I'm going to go for it: write another month of this blog and see what happens.

A lot can happen in a month as a lot of y'all learned in the previous blog posts, but I think some of the entries will be an update on some of the things that have happened, and some the entries will include things about everyday life. I would like to say that I appreciate all the support y'all gave me when I wrote the blog daily before. For this streak of blogs, I am simply doing it for fun, and I hope y'all enjoy reading it in the month of May.