Let’s Start From the Beginning, Shall We?

The Beginning: How and When Mom Embraced Writing

If you’re new here, welcome. You’ll get to know me really quickly. My name is Popcorn. I’m six. I’m a pretty introspective kid for my age, which unfortunately has led to a bit of anxiety, but I’ll save that for my book coming out in 2035 (i.e. mom needs to get her shit together). I’ll take over the blog now and again because honestly, it’s way more fun to hear it from me anyway. Ask my mom’s friends, they’ll tell you. Also, I don’t really give a crap what people think about me, so I am free to say whatever. You should try it sometime. So…the beginning…let’s start there.

Back in 2005…

Mom ditched her then-boyfriend to study abroad in Aix-en-Provence, France. She was a clueless college girl, who applied for the program through the University of San Diego (read: overpriced private Catholic school), at the urging of great-grandma Manou. Before she knew it, it was time to leave. She ran out to buy an iPad for Manou to keep in touch, and thus the blogging began. Mom wrote about her relationship strife, her dislocated jaw from an oversized baguette, her NEW French boyfriend who then turned into her French fiance (see below…she went straight for the French goatee), and everything in between. It was her way of staying connected to the ONE person that mattered more than all the others. Great-grandma Manou printed ALL of her blogs on REAL LIFE paper, which mom is so thankful to have now.

She returned to the US in 2006, and little did she know that a chance encounter with a Hungarian dude would turn into a lifetime of friendship and writing about that friendship.

Fast-forward to 2012…

Mom was torn. She was in her last year of graduate school and was forced to take a class from another discipline. She chose Leadership Studies. If you would have known mom back then, she needed all the leadership help she could get. That ONE class, in her LAST year, changed the trajectory of her life. She was asked to write a paper about a personal conflict she was currently facing…choosing between a PhD program in San Diego or running off to Budapest to teach English. The conventional versus the unconventional. Dr. Hernandez sat with EVERY SINGLE student to discuss their paper at the end of the year. That was the first time mom really felt heard. At that end of that 30 minutes, she knew what she had to do.

So she packed her bags AGAIN, cried her eyes right out of her head, and kissed grandma Manou goodbye for the second time. It hurt. Like, SOUL hurt. But that same soul knew she needed to go. She didn’t understand why, but she has always learned in hindsight that being open was the only real way to find happiness.

So she blogged her ASS off. Six hundred and forty-six entries to be exact, because it was the one way she could feel as if she was sitting in grandma Manou’s little apartment in Point Loma, sipping on Ceylon tea and laughing about the “Jambon Club.”

You can find that first blog here.

And subsequently, one of her favorite excerpts here.

Also, side note, did you know that you can turn your blog into an ACTUAL printed book? Yep. It’s awesome.

2016…

We moved to Lyon and mom started a fancier blog with fancier photos. As a photographer, she didn’t want to post crappy cell phone shots anymore, which turned out to be kinda sad. Just like on IG, sometimes when you are going for perfection, you end up missing the best parts of life. So with THIS blog…she plans to do things a bit differently, and if it looks like crap, she’ll deal. She doesn’t want to miss anything…

And here we are, in 2019…

Mom is 35, happier then she’s ever been. Looking back on all of these decisions, she’s not as sure it’s all been based on luck, but more on intuition. She followed those little urgings of her soul, and here she is…telling us to clean up our 24,586 socks and loving every minute of it.