Hello Again

Guess who forgot to cancel her wordpress subscription! This (very distracted) lady! Two years in a row now, I think my subconscious has willed me to forget to cancel this website so I would be forced to start blogging again. I started this blog so long ago and had dreams that I would continue to document my travels forever. In a perfect world I would have unlimited funds to travel to new places and share my adventures on this blog. Unfortunately the secret family fortune that I’ve been banking on materializing never came through so I’ve made alternate plans.

I’ve actually had a draft of something in this vein sitting unpublished for almost a year now. There was still so much that was in motion in my life that whenever I went to hit publish I would realize something had changed and I didn’t have the time or energy or desire to really verbalize those changes but it felt wrong sharing something but not everything that encompassed how I was feeling.

I’ve always been a big believer that its ok to not have your opinion out in the world. When people say ‘I just tell it how it is’ or ‘I’m all about brutal honesty’ I always think… who asked for that? Is the world a better place because your opinion is now out there? Most of the time the answer is no. So in that same vein I haven’t really felt super passionate about anything enough to really write a blog. But, now that I have this blog for another year I felt I might as well use this space to get some thoughts out. And honestly it’s not that I haven’t had anything to say since my last blog in August 2022. It’s just that I’ve also been insanely busy, so enmeshed in life!

Here’s a quick overview, some highlights in no particular order, that will bring us up to today

-moved back to the US, settled into life in NY. Reentered the multiple job grind that is required to survive here

-got a nanny job and helped watch two amazing girls for a year

-quickly realized I wanted a type of stability that I had never really lusted after before

-got into all three early childhood education graduate school programs I applied to 

-decided to go to Hunter, the same school my grandmother got her teaching degree

-had multiple family members go through terrible health diagnoses

-spent a lot of time in the park trying and failing to stay off my phone

-spent a lot of time in Brooklyn’s public libraries 

-was bossed around by multiple toddlers

-decided Eric Adams and Kathy Holchul were #1 and 2 on my shit list

-resolved and made peace with the fact that I will be in Brooklyn for the foreseeable future

-missed my overseas friends more than I thought possible

-worked harder in grad school than I’ve ever worked on anything in my life. 

-got a 4.0 my first 3 semesters, realized I could have given about 25% less effort and still gotten a 4.0

-developed stomach ulcers

-had so many stomach problems that I ended up having to poop in a bag and bring it to my doctor’s office which prompted me to start feeling a lot more suspicious about what other people had in their bags on the subway

-was diagnosed with IBS (not a shocker at all) and a malabsorption stomach disorder, was forced to change so much about what and how I eat.

-went to a lot of therapy

-visited a lot of cities outside of New York City and realized that I physically and mentally can not handle living in a city where I am 100% dependent on a car

-started taking ballet again and remembered why I love dance

-read so many academic articles about child development and education policy that I felt like my brain was waterlogged and to get any new information in I would have to word vomit any old information out

-did not read enough for enjoyment

-started performing again 

-watched one of my closest friends marry her soul mate and organized her bachelorette party

-taught a theater summer camp

-moved in with my boyfriend

-finished the first draft of a book I’d really like to sell or even self publish

And I think that brings up to today. I would love to start writing more but to do that I think I would need something to write about. I don’t like that I don’t have a clear picture of what the future holds, but I think that’s something I will always struggle with. I’d love to get to a place where I feel confident enough in myself that my anxiety at new tasks and events doesn’t completely burn me up from the inside out. It’s important to focus on the now. 

For my next post I’d love to write about my experience with nannying in New York or possibly my experiences in grad school. If anyone would like to suggest a topic please do so I can keep flexing these writer muscles that are so underutilized as of late!