story #1 in my “23 stories for a fried chicken sandwich” project.

how did i get here? right here to writing this. how?

i mean, besides through the stories i have always loved to write: from elementary school shorts on blue-lined, hole-punched pages to the extra-juicy teen saga i wrote in high school, which filled an entire notebook (it was so so bad) onto the english degree and the mfa in creative writing, during which time i met melissa, my writing partner for everlasting life and forevermore.

but this place, this blog from which i write to you came from a series of starts and light-as-feather inspirations that fell from the sky into a meandering path that i would follow here. i’m not sure which came first, blogging or mamazine, but in 2005, amy and i started mamazine, a literary webzine where mamas could share their truths. we kept it going for a good 3.5 years, and some of our columnists and featured writers have become friends and some of the ones who hadn’t already have even hit the bigtime (book deals, baby!). thinking about this makes me very happy.

somewhere in there, i started blogging for myself and a few friends on livejournal. just words. and then words rolled into photos and then into a year-long the little zygote that could blog. yep, back then, clubmom (now gone) paid me to write weekly about the viable pregnancy that came after my two (and we worried maybe three then) miscarriages. here is my first post for zygote.

once the little zygote that could gig ended, i pushed it all into happinest and later started today is pretty for the photo side of things and then i just kept today is pretty — until i met shari, my cyber twin with whom i started this joy+ride, an amazing bi-monthly inspiration blog dedicated to featuring original work of artists and writers, which makes me smile. big.

after zygote, i stayed on behind the scenes with clubmom, which had become cafemom, and now they provide me a crazy-awesome day job where i write and write every day. unbelievable, huh?

as i put it all down, i seriously wonder if any of it really matters, this glimpse at the path that carried me to the moment in which i am writing this. or is what really matters the rest of the story that’s made up of scribbles on napkins, voicemails to myself, bits of fiction and poetry, a twice-unfinished novel, thousands of blurry, crooked photographs i can’t throw away, and worries worried in the dark?

i don’t know the answer. i just know blogging (and flickring and even tweeting sometimes) blows my mind.

sometimes life is so dang pretty i just have to write a post or snap a photo. sometimes i want to look at a moment long and from all sides and then package it up and keep it for myself. like a memory but somehow better.

but maybe more than anything, blogging has been about holding my breath and planting my truth like a perfect-enough flower on a path, where it waits to be discovered by someone — even just one person, even a passerby who keeps moving. because often enough, when that person does lay eyes on my truth, they completely understand and recognize what they see. in the tiniest moment, my truth is a bit of their own truth too. and that right there is what got me here.