Right in Front of Me...

I wish I could say something quirky like I used to have a blog on a French server because I thought it was hip or I have been writing blogs since before it was mainstream or tell you to check out my blog about the semester I spent in Germany. But I'm simply not that cool.

Despite the fact that i have been writing in journals and scribbling stories and poems on scraps of paper since I first understood the concept of a sentence (probably even before then), I have been reluctant to start a blog.

Why?

Fear.

Simple as that. It's amazing how much of life is dictated by fear.

But Katherine, the observant person may say, you have another blog on this very server...yeah, I do. My beautiful husband tried to lovingly push me over the ledge from which I was scared to jump. But alas, as so many good intentions tend to do, it did not work. The furthest I fell was a title for the post ("Pedestals are for Porcelain Pots, not People") and sadly, I have no idea what I was planning on writing.

But today I decided it was time. It was time because I have not written much in the past three or four years. It was time because fear gets us nowhere, but looking fear straight in the face and telling it to bugger off, does. It was time because I have an idea and I'm itching to explore it...

My inspiration for To Think That I Saw it... is two-fold:

The first—and perhaps the most the obvious—is the children's book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. A book that I did not get to read until I was an adult, because Dr. Seuss wasn't read in my house (sounds tragic, I know. But, for me, my mother raising me without Dr. Seuss--or green peas--is just part of what makes my mother so endearing). Despite my ripe age when I first read it, it captured my imagination. I was as excited about the book as any six-year-old might be (more so, probably). The adventure of every day life seen through the prism of imagination is such a lovely adventure indeed.

The second—and most important—is my grandfather. He and I used to people watch and make up stories about the people we saw. Our stories were grand. Our stories were funny. Our stories were even sad and sometimes scary. But most importantly, our stories wove a bond between us that endures now, long after he has passed. There is nothing, as far as I can tell, better than that.

My goals for To Think That I Saw it... are simple:

(1) To write every day! But not just on scraps of paper or in notebooks that no one else reads.
(2) To have an adventure.
(3) To brave possible feedback (or worse...nobody reading my writing).

So, please, join me as I embark on an adventure to tell one story a day, every day, that I have imagined based on one thing I saw that day!