Wow, today kinda snuck up on me—My Ideal Woman is one year old! I’m actually glad I didn’t totally miss it—some of you may have noticed I haven’t really updated in a while. These past few weeks have been a brutal combination of being insanely busy and insanely stressful, and the combination of mental drain and preoccupation on various worries has left little room for musings on life, love and happiness. Thankfully, things have finally started falling into place, lists are being checked off, and while I’m still holding my breath a little bit, I think everything’s going to be okay. One thing I do know—I’m really, REALLY looking forward to the housewarming/birthday throw-down I’ve planned in June. I really need some epic fun…
So… May 26th, 2011 I put up my very first blog post. I was inspired to give blogging a try by two women I’ve never met face-to-face, but had gotten to know over the internet. The first was Rachel M., who I followed on Livejournal for a while. A superb writer, I found her posts engaging—sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking. In her I saw a bit of a kindred-spirit, and I always found myself cheering her on, hoping for things to go her way, and hitting the comment button to offer condolences when they didn’t. Eventually she left Livejournal and started a blog, Toughbunny.
The second was MJ, a woman I met online through our mutual love of a collectible card game. I write a weekly column about the game, and one day out of the blue she emailed me a sketch of something I’d written about in my column, something I’d imagined and wish I’d had a picture of. We sent some emails back and forth, followed each other on Twitter, friended each other on Facebook. Again, I saw in her a bit of a kindred-spirit in things we’d both experienced in life, and then one day she started up a blog as well, Moxy MTG. Her writing was whip-smart and funny, and I enjoyed reading everything she put up. She’s also an incredibly artist, and she was sweet enough to draw up the banner art that tops this blog.
It occurred to me after Rachel and then MJ started their blogs that blogging offered a much better way to reach out to a larger audience than Livejournal did. I’d been doing a ton of writing for a long time about that collectible card game, and while I love writing about it, the audience for that writing is pretty niche. When friends or family wanted to know if I’d written anything lately, I could show them that stuff, but they wouldn’t understand whether it was funny or interesting unless they were into that game (and most are not). I make some money on that writing, but if I were ever to get to my goal of writing for a living, I’d very likely need to show that I can write other things as well.
