To introduce my recurring Nostalgia feature, it makes sense to go all the way back to the beginning.
I started the blog in August 2010 as I prepared to move to Italy after college graduation and in my very first post dated August 10, 2010, I bemoaned the challenge of just getting started:
as soon as i graduated in may, my to do list has consisted of one major thing: get ready to move to italy. while this is only one thing, it encompasses a trillion other tiny little things, one of which is “start a blog.” i tried to start this blog probably 10 times throughout the course of the summer, but each time i stopped before it was completed because of various reasons: i didn’t have a good title, i didn’t know what to write about, i wanted to take a nap instead, you get the idea. well, now, it’s crunch time. i’m leaving in approximately 40 hours to begin my version of the real world and i’m not packed yet.
As I’m prepping to launch this here Substack, my current self can fully empathize with the version of me that wrote this post in 2010 – so many tiny things on a to-do list when the most important one is just to write and then send it. In 2010, my main goal was to efficiently keep many people updated on my life (before social media became an easy way to do this) but it also became a way for me to journal and preserve my experiences and memories. It taught me that I like to write.
So now, in this iteration of my online space, the main goal is to reawaken those writing muscles to process and preserve my experiences and memories. I also want to remember that I like to write. Someone (or probably many people) have said that the difference between writers and everyone else is just getting started so here I am, getting started.
To give extra depth of context to future Nostalgia posts, below is the “about me” page from my dusty old WordPress blog. I did repurpose the blog a few years after my time in Europe as my husband and I biked across the country and you’ll see that reflected below. Note that I was not interested in capital letters and my use of exclamation points borders on unhinged – and honestly, those things haven’t changed much. Autocorrect has made it harder to not capitalize proper nouns and the beginning of sentences however, I am nothing if not enthusiastic. My desire to not intimidate has caused me to always edit my punctuation but we’ll see how that plays out here where I’m hoping to bring my authentic (exclamation-point-filled) self.
About me and my version of the real world
this blog began as a way to keep in touch with friends and family. i was moving to italy after graduation and it seemed like the cool way to keep everyone in the loop about what i was up to. after all, my travel stories wouldn’t fit into a tweet or facebook status update.
so i spent a year in trieste, italy working at an international school and gallivanting around my corner of europe. i sent hundreds of postcards, learned to cook, turned into a coffee aficionado, and realized that spontaneous outings can be some of the best. i kept blogging through all of my adventures and intertwined with cut-and-dry facts about my days were my thoughts and realizations as i sought to figure out life. [after all, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when you go to europe after college?]
then that year ended and i left italy. i hadn’t found myself or figured out life. i spent the next year floating around with even less direction than i had before but somehow, sometime, it became OK to not know what was coming next. it became OK to not have a concrete plan of my own. it became easier to trust the plan that was out of my control.
i’m still living my life, all over the place. i’m still a 20-something college grad and i’m still hoping to make a difference in the world and an impression on the people in it. however, now, instead of searching for myself and stressing about what my future holds, i’m going to ride the spin of the globe and let my future come to me. i know my place in the world will find me along the way.
in regards to “growing up,” i have replaced my almost crippling nervous anxiety with delirious excitement and eagerness for what’s to come. i know now that it’s not about finding the answers to life, it’s about living through the questions until the answers aren’t important anymore. no one knows what the future holds until it’s too late to change things and that’s what makes life interesting.
once i really settled into that contentment with the unknown and eagerness for what comes next, a lot of things came next. quickly next. i let a high school friend take care of me while i was recovering from ankle surgery. then 11 months later, we got married. it was a crazy and amazing year. so now i’m a 20-something college grad with a husband and a dog and we’re working to figure out how we can be the strongest team out there. i’m still hoping to make that little bit of difference but now i have a teammate which makes things so much more exciting.
i’m living in my version of the real world but i don’t know what that means. along my way, i will continue to chronicle my adventures but i won’t pretend to know what they will include. keep tabs on me and how my life evolves; hopefully my stories will inspire some open-minded adventure in you and your version of the real world.