My First Post

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So here it is, my first post...

I had been contemplating what this blog will be all about, and with a background in communications and journalism, I pondered long and hard on how I would sell it. A travel blog? A food blog? A books blog? Pop culture? Mindless ramble?

How about all of the above?

I know not having a specific niche won't find me legions of followers, but for this blog, it's ok...because in truth, I'm writing this blog for my main audience...which is myself. Anyone else who has the patience to follow the personal musings of a newly thirty-something wife can come along for the ride.

I named this blog as an ode to one of my favorite novels, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. There's a section that goes something like this:

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would ...choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet. "

Which fig did I choose?

I chose them all. OK, maybe not the fig with lovers with queer names or even the one with the Olympic crew champion...although I hope to have my own "Olympic" feat someday...

In my younger years (my single, twentysomethings), I lived life without much care to the future. I lived for the moment, I traveled to exotic places on my own, I was a journalist and an editor, writing stories on everyday heroes, covering celebs and going to parties, and I earned my Master's degree. Now, I'm 30, I recently married the love of my life and I'm at a crossroads.

Like millions of other Americans, I'm unemployed, looking for work and trying to live life despite not having a professional life to identify with at the moment.

I used to think life slowed down at 30. Once you were married and had kids...that was it. Say so long to life, to adventure...

But I'm not done eating the figs under my tree. There is more to my future.

So join me as I taste every pleasure in life and encounter the ones that are hard to swallow. Because life does not end at 30.

As Anthony Bourdain would say, "I'm hungry for more!"