Ever since I left Mexico, I have had the urge to write. Not constantly, but rather off and on throughout the past year. Actually, it's been two years now.
Without the excuse of international travel, however, I couldn't bring myself to write anything down. What could possibly be so interesting about my everyday experience? Even though I have a proliferation of blogs bearing my name (starting with my high school MySpace page, meghalomania), I don't typically suffer from the delusions of grandeur that would lead me to think that people might actually want to read about me. At the same time, however, I need a place to put stuff down, to process what goes on. And so rather than troubling others with my constant musings about life in the Bay Area, I decided to start another blog.
My experience with journaling has been shaky at best. When I was a kid, I used to pick up pen and notebook every so often with grandiose ideas of writing every day, chronicling every detail of my life for future reference. But this gets boring: not only to write, but to read as well. What stuck the second time around, when I was living in Mexico City in 2009, was not chronicling everything I did but rather writing to process my ideas and thoughts about living in a new place. This is not to say that interesting things didn't happen (swine flu among them) but more important is that I discovered writing as a tool to explore the world around me, to pause and think in-depth about life as I see it.
When I last signed off, I had returned to Berkeley to finish out the Mexican semester and prepare for my senior year at Cal. I was volunteering as a mentor at the local middle school, and generally enjoying life traveling around and going on adventures. I have since graduated, and now I run the mentoring program at the local middle school. Friends and relatives have come and gone in what has possibly been one of the hardest transitions of my life. But what I see every day, as a counselor to at-risk youth and a resident of the Bay, continues to inspire me to write. And so here I am, on a lazy Sunday, giving this thing another go and hoping that in this way I can keep my mind turning and my fingers moving...
Without the excuse of international travel, however, I couldn't bring myself to write anything down. What could possibly be so interesting about my everyday experience? Even though I have a proliferation of blogs bearing my name (starting with my high school MySpace page, meghalomania), I don't typically suffer from the delusions of grandeur that would lead me to think that people might actually want to read about me. At the same time, however, I need a place to put stuff down, to process what goes on. And so rather than troubling others with my constant musings about life in the Bay Area, I decided to start another blog.
My experience with journaling has been shaky at best. When I was a kid, I used to pick up pen and notebook every so often with grandiose ideas of writing every day, chronicling every detail of my life for future reference. But this gets boring: not only to write, but to read as well. What stuck the second time around, when I was living in Mexico City in 2009, was not chronicling everything I did but rather writing to process my ideas and thoughts about living in a new place. This is not to say that interesting things didn't happen (swine flu among them) but more important is that I discovered writing as a tool to explore the world around me, to pause and think in-depth about life as I see it.
When I last signed off, I had returned to Berkeley to finish out the Mexican semester and prepare for my senior year at Cal. I was volunteering as a mentor at the local middle school, and generally enjoying life traveling around and going on adventures. I have since graduated, and now I run the mentoring program at the local middle school. Friends and relatives have come and gone in what has possibly been one of the hardest transitions of my life. But what I see every day, as a counselor to at-risk youth and a resident of the Bay, continues to inspire me to write. And so here I am, on a lazy Sunday, giving this thing another go and hoping that in this way I can keep my mind turning and my fingers moving...
