Not a first

I first learned about this whole "blog thing" in 2004. I was about to spend the summer in NYC for an internship and had been Googling phrases like "living in NYC" and "summer in NYC", etc., and came across this site that organized local blogs along the MTA subway path (which is pretty awesome). I began clicking through and reading about the lives of strangers and loving the secretive glimpse into their doings...except not secretive at all, since they put it out there (am very much into voyeurism, but the non-shady kind, which is why I love pictures/posts about things like "What's in my bag", or "My day: hour by hour"). I'm completely fascinated by how other people live, their random tidbits, odd habits, jealousy-inducing trinkets, and organizational strategies (I so do LOVE a post about organization!).

So, anyway, that's how I began bookmarking blog sites (this was before RSS feeds) and checking in to see what these people were up to. After I graduated from college (a year after that summer in NYC, and a few weeks before I went off to Italy for a month by myself—that same vacation where I met my now-husband, R), I decided to start up my own little blog called If I Only Had a Red Vespa—there were a few posts about closing the college chapter of my life, the romance that started in Italy, about why I wasn't happy in the DC area/with my job, the things I wanted for and from my life, but the whole thing was clouded over with this sense of unhappiness and unfulfillment. And even though I wrote it anonymously, with only three real-life friends knowing about it, I think it was sometimes stilted, and not really all "me" and I grew tired of it. In all it lasted about a year, but I did get to know a few great people through it, and still stay in touch with a few women via Facebook/Twitter/Instagram—and have even met up with two of them.

A few years passed, with me not writing anywhere but still reading blogs—some old, some new, and I decided to try it again. Only this time I decided to put a particular "spin" on it: writing about how we (R and I) infuse our American life with bits of our other cultures (Italian/Swedish). Only problem is that since I'm the American, I would have to rely really heavily on my husband for content (since my ethnic background isn't really that big a part of my culture), so Zagara di Sicilia quickly fizzled out and I deleted it without even saving it (as I did my first blog).

{ Found somewhere online years ago—my (dream) little red Vespa }

Which brings me to this one.

My first blog was a bit of past perfect because I sometimes felt myself writing trying too hard to make things perfect or despairing too much over why things weren't perfect, while the second was definitely future conditional because it was too focused on the cultures I was adopting and where we might eventually be, versus where I actually was in the moment.

I'm hoping third time's a charm and this little space will let me be me.

I want a place to capture the small moments that are happening as they happen, to have a record of changes that will be coming, and connect with (blog) friends in a more meaningful way. I've always felt a little shoddy about peeking into other worlds and never sharing any of my own. And there are so many things I want to explore or challenge myself to learn and I want this to be a place where I do a little of that. The one thing that's still the same, though, is I'm anonymous (at the moment).

So, here's to writing in the now, neither perfect nor progressive nor conditional, just present.