Come on in, the water's fine...

Okay, this is my first go at a blog of my own. Since I make my living as a writer, perhaps it seems odd that I haven't published a blog long since.  It's not that I haven't thought about it, or wanted to do it, but figuring out what to say in a blog isn't as straightforward as it first appears.  At least, not for me.  For those of you who know me well, you know that the last several years have been painful and difficult, and while I needed to express what my sweetie and I were going through, I didn't feel a blog was the appropriate place to do that. Some things, many things, actually, are too personal for a blog. And what we were dealing with was so overwhelming that it largely blotted out anything else I might have wanted to say.

I've been reading friends' and my partner's blog for several years now with great enjoyment.  It's fun to get to know a different facet of my friends' personalities, because their blogging style doesn't always reflect what I know of them from face-to-face encounters.  It'll be interesting to see if my blog reflects my personality to you, dear reader.  

So here goes.  I'll be blogging about food sustainability issues, which is a large area that also includes gardening.  This is a topic that has interested me for a long time, in a purely personal kind of way, but now that I'm actively pursuing work in this field, I want to share what I know, what I'm learning, and what I want to learn next.  It's exciting to be involved, even if only in a volunteer capacity, with a subject that is relatively new on most folks' radar and that's getting a lot of buzz at present.  There's a lot of optimism among folks who work in food sustainability.  Nobody seems jaded or overwhelmed or cynical or fatalistic, and (I have to say), after years of listening to (and participating in) rants about the lack of funding for music and music education in this country, I find that terribly refreshing.

I will also blog about classical music from time to time, because that's how I currently make my living, and because it's still something that engages me. Or enrages me, depending on the day.  A few weeks ago I almost drove off the road after I heard an announcer on our local classical music station mention the "Siegfried Iddle."  (That's Idyll, folks.)  Given that I've applied twice now to be an on-air host at said station, and they haven't even had the courtesy to acknowledge receiving my resume and air-check, I was both highly annoyed and feeling kinda smug at the same time.  

The other stuff I want to blog about is less interesting, perhaps, to others, but stuff I need to say.  Job-hunting, not to mention a full-fledged career change, is a lonely, isolating, confidence-sucking endeavor, and I need to whine talk about it from time to time.  It's directly connected to the middle-class mid-life angst, of course. And being involuntarily and unwillingly childless, in a community, religion and culture that puts so much emphasis on having children, is difficult, to say the least. 

So that's what you're in for, if you decide to check out this blog on a regular (or irregular) basis.  Don't say you haven't been warned.

Ciao-