First of all, I’m sorry! I’m sorry for being inconsistent with posting this summer! I’ve been writing on this blog since my freshmen year of high school and I’ve taken some weeks off here and there for holidays or during finals weeks over the years, but I feel as though I’ve recently been taking off a lot of weeks here. This blog has always been my outlet; a place where I can come and write about what’s going on in my head and I don’t know what’s been going on recently, but I just haven’t fell into the groove of writing.

I feel like I’ve touched upon this in a few blog posts recently, but haven’t fully unpacked it; I haven’t even really thought about why it is that the posts haven’t been flowing so easily recently. I think it took me a while to find my niche on this blog and decide what I wanted to write about and what I felt qualified to talk about on here – anything to do with being an expat, TCK, or international. This blog has never been about who I am, as you can tell I don’t share my name or my photo on here, but it’s more about what I can share or what impact I can have on people. For the past six-ish years I’ve poured so much into this blog each week, knowing that if what I write can resonate with even just one person it will be worthwhile.

Back when I first created this blog just after my freshmen year of high school, the decision to be anonymous made sense. I was young, I didn’t really want to have all my personal information out there, and high schoolers can be mean – people definitely would have had something to say! But I’ve really grown up on this blog; sharing my growth and development at each step over the past few years. I’ve taken you along on the journey of moving, finding my career path, and learning how to take care of myself. I feel as though I’ve sort of grown out of the decision I made all those years ago of keeping myself personally out of this blog.

Over the past couple of months I’ve found myself struggling to write blog posts, and it got me thinking – am I just growing out of blogging? Now that I’m a grown up, is it time to just grow out of this space? No, I don’t think so. I still love this space and I love writing posts on here, but I think I’ve been craving being able to bring more of a personal touch to this space. Instead of taking personally identifying features out of this blog, I want to be able to share more of who I am, post random photos from my week instead of ones I’ve carefully curated that don’t include my face. This space is all about sharing my perspective and connecting with people, and after all, it is hard to connect with someone when you don’t know much about them!

This blog has always been my side hustle, second to my academics and career, but something that I look forward to updating every week. But recently I think writing posts felt more like a chore because I had to make it so separate from the rest of my life. I’m hoping that by opening up a bit more and being more myself, writing on here can become my effortless outlet again.

And let me get this straight, if you like my content you won’t be disappointed, not too much is going to change here! I’m not going to suddenly become an influencer and change what I post. No, you can just expect to learn more about who I am while reading posts here. I think these changes will make it easier to connect with me and my content; think of it as a small but complimentary change to what you already get here!

So with that, as I just passed my 21st birthday and officially became an adult, let me sign off a blog post with my own name for the first time ever…

See you next week,