I'm 29 and live in Philadelphia with my awesome husband and our three cats. By day I teach high school English which can be both exhiliarating and excrucitating all at once. When I'm not busy being a purveyor of literary knowledge -- not to mention of taste and wisdom -- I enjoy film, music, books of all sorts, witty and sardonic humor, truly tasteless humor, cool shoes, felines, skiing in winter, people, Buddhist psychology, pretending to meditate, procrastinating writing my first novel, and amusing, edifying and, at times, appalling the blogosphere with my rants, insights and myriad commentary.
I have been immersed in the act of blogging as means of virtual catharsis for almost two years now. My blog, however, has enjoyed somewhat of a sordid history. After about a year into my first attempt, I killed Blog Number One when I realized that it was straying from what I wanted it to be. When a good friend of mine came back from a Buddhist retreat on compassion at the end of last summer, she talked to me about how she felt that her absolutely brilliant and hilarious (my descriptor) blog needed to go; it had apparently become, in her words, too full of ego, and she was feeling caught up in who was commenting and how many hits she was getting. It started to become a tiresome effort to keep projecting this persona that was always "on" and "cool." Six months later, I completely got it.
Enter Phase Two of blogging. I began a new less-guarded, less snarky effort which was moving along swimmingly...until, all of a sudden, a student found it. At that point I hightailed it to a new location and launched a covert operation called "Life as a Fugitive." Right after I very quickly hijacked that blog, one of my friends said that she felt "like we all just jumped in a car and went squealing out of a parking lot" and were then "catapulting down a dusty back road in the desert." It was a perfect analogy. And, to be honest, I never got truly comfortable in my new skin. "Life as a Fugitive" always felt temporary and a little on-edge.
Recently I had the opportunity to revive all of my ancient posts from the blogosphere's graveyard. At first I wasn't sure that I wanted to do so for aforementioned reasons, but, in the end I decided that the less-enlightened pieces were important markers on the journey to here. If you're curious, check the archives.
At any rate, you've finally stumbled upon the latest incarnation of The Blog, in all of its messy, virtual spendor. Happy Reading.