Hello there! This is my first post. How many times I’ve wanted to write this! How many times I’ve drafted posts I was sure would be the first one to kick off the blog. How many times have I wanted to kick off this blog!
But this time it’s real. I feel it. I’ve decided this now, at 7 pm at the new dining room table in my new house. The table is new to me, but not new to the world. We got it used from a family who’s had it since it was designed in the late 1960s (tapered silver legs and a walnut Formica top). When we went to check it out, the people selling it were singing the praises of this table so fervently that there wasn’t much room to ask questions. It was only $125 and after hearing (in detail) about the many family dinners held around this table, I felt good about the purchase.
And thus it is now in the center of our dining area.
Hopefully all those years of shared meals infused the table with homey, happy energy.
I haven’t done any rituals to infuse the rest of our new home with good vibes, but maybe I should. Instead, I’ve been sort of edging around the house. It’s kind of like going on a first date with a guy and beforehand found out he was going to be your husband. Technically, this is my home. But it doesn’t feel like my home. It feels like a stranger.
The walls are bare of pictures; our things are crammed like deep banks of snowdrift in every corner of every room; and besides this dining room table, a couch, and a bed, we have no furniture. Even this neighborhood, with its different style of houses clustered in whorls and loops and dead ends all wholly unfamiliar, is completely new to me.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t get to know my new house, and in fact, fall in love with it. I’m simply a bit overloaded with change at the moment.
We moved in the week of Thanksgiving and now it’s the week of Christmas and I can’t help but note just how much in our lives has changed. Jobs were gained, jobs were lost. Apartments were moved into and moved out of. Plans to move to California were suddenly dashed in favor of moving into one side of the duplex we’ve been building for the last 2 years. And I stare at the tiniest Christmas tree I’ve ever had (it was the only $30 tree in a sea of $110 trees at the tree farm) and wonder how I’m going to become the lady of this household, write my first book, launch this blog, get the hottest and fittest I’ve ever been, and plan my wedding by June. Oh, and have the best relationships I’ve ever had, surrounded by best friends, always invited to or hosting parties, and living in a romance novel with my fiancé.
All perfectly achievable if I just stick to my seventeen-step plan.
In truth, I want so badly to be this positive person. I want to radiate well-being and success and effortlessness.
That’s why I’m starting this blog, imperfectly and improperly. Because “not writing” has proven to be the most demoralizing and hair-pulling activity in my life and because I am ready. Ready to begin.
My number one goal for the new year is to keep writing. I must must must keep writing. Everything else can go to hell but I just cannot handle another year of deferring this goal to be a real writer. And writing this blog, which may possibly never get read, will get me there. I just know it.
