Coming Clean

I began writing this blog in September of 2006 and although some things about the way I write the blog have changed, some things have remained constant throughout. I try to write about what I'm learning and experiencing, and why it is important to me. I write about wine and food, not about the other things I feel passionate about. I try to tell a joke here and there. I don't cuss. I write the blog anonymously and I don't go into details about my personal life. Not out of any strong conviction, it just worked out that way.

I'm sure you can tell that I've had trouble writing lately, and I think I understand why now. You know how if you have a secret that you cannot figure out how to tell a friend, you wind up avoiding that friend? Until you finally figure out how to come clean, and then you feel normal again. Well, that's how I've been feeling about you, the group of people who read this blog. I have no idea who you are for the most part, but I know you're out there, and I am ready to share my secret with you so that I can stop avoiding you. I want to write and enjoy the blog again. This isn't easy for me to do, and I hope you will read this as therapeutic for me, nothing more than that. But I have to break my rule about sharing the boring details of my personal life.

BrooklynLady and I got separated several months ago and we are headed towards divorce. It has been the hardest, saddest, loneliest, strangest, angriest, most hopeless, scariest, most emotionally draining, and most unsettling experience of my life. And we are doing it amicably! I have my kids half the time, and everyone is healthy and doing the best they can.

I stayed in the apartment I'd been in in since before I started the blog, but I wanted to move, to have a fresh start. Not so easy, as it turns out. Prices have changed since I last looked, and I need a space that feels good enough to share with my kids, to be comfortable during this transition. I moved, it was a TOTAL debacle and had to move again a month later, but now it's been almost a week and I'm settling in, feeling better about my personal space and more confident about my ability to find balance and perhaps somewhere down the road, happiness. I'm still figuring out how to establish the rhythm for this new life, and I hope you'll be forgiving as I figure out how (and whether or not) writing the blog can be part of my new life.

Turns out that this wine pairs beautifully with unpacking a new apartment, by the way.

Some of my very best and most beloved friends are people who I know because of this blog. If I never write another post (figure of speech - I know what I want to write about tomorrow night when the kids go to sleep) I'll have that to take with me. But I hope that coming clean here, sharing something big about myself, will help me to feel normal again about writing.

Thanks for listening and for reading, and I don't feel so weird around you anymore.