I remember writing the very first post for this blog like it was yesterday: sitting in a tiny Manhattan hotel room with purple backlighting, belly full of Asian fusion goodness, typing fast and furious. It almost felt a bit surreal (maybe it was the purple lighting; had me feeling a bit like I was working in my laptop, instead of on it), I was actually amused at how excited I was about the whole thing.
I started the blog mostly because I needed to practice writing before I was completely unable to produce something that wouldn’t ultimately be on corporate letterhead, so I was excited at how quickly and easily everything was falling into place. Even as I wrote that first post, great ideas for the next ones were already pouring into my mind. I knew what I wanted this project to be: a collection of food stories from around the world, borrowed from the interesting people in my life. Food is important – this much we can all agree on – but what I found so interesting was how everyone seemed to interpret that importance so differently, and thought of food in such different ways.
Great food stories seemed to be falling out of the sky that day, and many of them right from within my circle of friends: how ex-pats in the Arctic circle cook for Superbowl Parties, a perspective on food in literature by a professional reader, the story of a local entrepreneur who followed his tea shop to an unexpected journey of philanthropy on the other side of the planet. Tasty tales that people would want to know about! And with so many foodie friends, I was banking on a lot of great iPhone food porn. It turns out that everyone I know and their mom had often thought of starting their own blog, so people were totally enthusiastic about contributing. I liked the new project so much that I quickly decided to spend the year working on it.
And so it began.
And now, one year later, here is what I have learned about the blog world:
- Even with a low-barrier target of only one new piece a month, sometimes it isn’t so easy to make that happen. Maybe that’s why, when I do write, my posts are way too long (see above)
- 95% of people who very enthusiastically commit to content will ultimately bail. This may or may not make them bad friends
- Just because your own mom stopped reading your work, that’s not a good enough reason to stop writing
All of this to tell you that I will not be closing up shop as originally planned. Let’s try this for a bit longer and see if 2013 is a better year for blogging. And you should definitely call me on it if I have been slacking.
Oh, and PS, if you’ve promised me content, I’m coming to get it. You can run, you can hide, but I will find you.
