Return to Sender

Well hello there, strangers.

It's been almost two years since I've updated this blog and a lot - A LOT - has changed. To be quite honest, I'd rather forgotten this particular journal even existed, and you all probably did too. But alas, here I am - though I'd moved my 'official' platform over to Tumblr once I gained more credence in the blogosphere, I think I'm going to try and maintain this site to give those who actually DO know about it a bit of insight to my personal life (because if you've seen my Tumblr site, you'll know that it's all a bunch of funny pictures and fluff).

It's been awhile since I've actually sat and journaled, and after being reminded by a good friend that this blog still exists, I had the urge to post something - anything - in it.

Let's play a little catch-up, shall we?

The last time we spoke, dear readers, I had just moved from Pennsylvania to Delaware. I was blissfully settling into my surroundings in a new state, with new people, and new patterns. I acclimated myself to Delaware rather fast, and who wouldn't - beach life during the spring and summer months, tax-free shopping (including groceries!), a more laid-back, genteel breed of people, and a quiet solitude that sort of transcends throughout the area. In short? I. love. Delaware. I'll probably never leave.

After living here a few months, I was offered a part-time position at Evil Beet Gossip, a celebrity gossip site that the brilliant and illustrious Sasha Pasulka built from the ground up earlier in the decade. Sasha is a woman who, though I've never met in person, will forever remain embedded in my psyche because she was the one who gave me my start in professional - paid - writing and the subsequent opportunities. I owe her an insurmountable debt of gratitude. Throughout our first year here, the part-time position at Evil Beet turned into a full-time position, and I was handed Zelda Lily on a platter to manage. Though I had no prior experience in managing other writers, let alone the technical aspect of a business-based website, I took to it like a duck to water - I felt as if I'd never done anything else and never would do anything different. Writing has, in every facet of the phrase, become my life. Technical writing, free-form prose, structural analysis - it's not only my passion, but my livelihood. As our second year approached (and my husband's time in school drew closer to an end), I was presented with another amazing proposition by the aforementioned Sasha - I was asked to be the Managing Editor of Evil Beet, her 'baby,' for lack of a better word, as she was selling the business to an interested firm. Naturally, I was taken completely aback, and spent time waffling between both ends of the spectrum - the bright, rosy, optimistic end of 'I can totally do this,' to the bleak, black horizon of 'There's no way I can pull this off.' While I was both excited and apprehensive, there was still no doubt in my mind that I would take this project on, tackle it with both arms, hold it tightly and let it rip. One major lesson I've learned in life is not to allow things to take you for a ride, but to take those things that approach you for a ride of its own, and it hasn't failed me yet.

I've been managing Evil Beet for a few weeks now, and I'm loving every second of it - the professional development and superb networks that I've encountered have both, and equally, completely blown my mind, and I am positively staggered by the blessings that have been bestowed upon me.

My husband, daughter and I have spent almost two years in our current home, and recently gained an opportunity to move a bit (just a bit, mind you!) further inland, to, put it mildly, my dream home. The property is on an acre of private land, littered with hundred-year-old oak and maple trees - the home is a renovated farm house with four bedrooms, two baths, and a screened-in porch right out of Forrest Gump. Blessings? You have no idea. We move in less than two weeks (uncanny, right?) and I cannot begin to tell you how excited, optimistic, and gracious I feel toward the events which have occurred over the past years that ultimately brought me to where I am today. Though there have definitely been dark times, sorrowful occasions, and unfortunate happenings smattered throughout those same past years, I can look through and beyond them, all the while being grateful that they were present, endured, and overcome, because each and every moment that's been experienced has brought me precisely to where I am right. this very. moment. And guys? These moments - those over the past two years - have been the best yet.

I look forward to updating this site a bit more than I have in the past, enduring and documenting good times, inevitable circumstances of trial, and lessons learned through both.

Thanks for reading, and if you're reading this now - thanks for not forgetting me, too.