10.29.2015

happy 10th blogiversary to me!

Ten years ago today, I wrote my first post on this blog. Back then it was called Wazo Cafe Gallery ("wa-zo" is the phonetic notation for the French oiseau, which means bird, which is my maiden/middle name). We had recently moved from Oakland, California, to Boston, Massachusetts, where I was about two months into the MFA program at SMFA. Rather than wax poetic about how much has happened in those ten years (or bemoan how quickly they've gone by), I thought I'd make a simple list of 10 of the topics I've enjoyed writing about between then and now, in no particular order.


1. The Makery! For awhile, this series of posts was "fresh on Mondays!" with crafty projects posted weekly. It started as a way to sneak creativity back into my life after the birth of my first kid and eventually spawned a different kind of offspring in the form of felt Android phone cases that were featured on Mashable, Geek Sugar (now POPSUGAR), and Apartment Therapy. Then I got wicked carpal tunnel syndrome and had another kid.


2. The MFA Thesis. The whole shebang. The convoluted thought process leading to it. The travel writing via Athens, London, and Nashville, Tennessee. The digressions that occasionally involved tasks such as re-watching The Last Unicorn. The exhibition itself. And some reflections since. In my mind, at least, this is still very much a work in progress.



3. The cats. The now geriatric cats, Sophie and Xander. We adopted them a little over 16 years ago, so they've been with us the entire 10 years this blog has existed. I've written about them quite a bit, in one way or another. And they've inspired at least one crafty project.


Today is National Cat Day, after all, so they had to make the cut. They've earned it.


4. The TV show. The all-time favorite reality TV show. So You Think You Can Dance, of course. I'm not as committed to watching and reflecting on the show as I used to be, but I will get to see the live tour in San Francisco in December (this will be the second time; the first was in 2007, when this blog was just 2 years old).


5. The jobs. All 15 of them. Well, I'm up to the two jobs I had right before I started this blog, anyway. How fitting.


6. The family. I have another blog devoted to this topic (wait a second, am I a "mommy blogger"?!) but it's woefully outdated. Seriously, the toddler was a baby last time I updated it. Even so, occasionally, that part of my life spills over onto this blog. What can I say, it's messy.


7. The travel. The travel that was/is not thesis-related (or paid for with travel grants, sadly). I'm particularly nostalgic for the sightseeing done during our first summer in Boston, which coincided nicely with reading and listening to Sarah Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot.


8. The handmade marketplace. No, not that one. You know what I'm talking about. The one where I ran my micro-business for 4+ years until sales tanked and I found myself stuck between a rock (stay-at-home-mom) and a hard place (day job).


9. The running. The first marathon took place before this blog was started, but I wrote all about the second one, the 2012 Oakland marathon, here. These days, I'm content to run the 3 mile lap around Oakland's Lake Merritt two to three mornings each week, so there's not much to write about.


10. The food! Last, but certainly not least. The food, you could say, is what ties it all together, don't you think?

I was hoping to turn at least one of these topics into some sort of book, if for nothing else than to satisfy my own archival desires, but this'll have to do for now. Here's to 10 more years of writing. Oh, and I have a newsletter/mailing list sign-up box to the right. I'll start a newsletter as soon as I have 10 readers signed up. Deal?

Thanks for reading, guys. I cherish each and every one of you.