Once again, from the beginning.

I promised myself that I would not talk about my personal life on this blog. People would be identified by initials, or by their role in my life (the boss, the co-worker,the friend). No names. I didn't want people to find my blog by Googling themselves, or something. This brings me to a conversation I had a few months back, with a co-worker. She had mentioned reading about some Christmas party at our house one year on someone's blog. When pressed for details, K. (my co-worker) couldn't remember what happened, but there was something regarding a gift exchange at the party, how this guy was deeply disappointed that he was not allowed to keep his gift because it was too girly. Although being gay, he had no problem with the girly gift and kept thinking of it (a pair of bracelets, I later found out) longingly. I kept asking K. how she had found the blog to begin with, and it turned out that K. had tried to find my phone number by Googling me, which yielded nothing, and my parents. Apparently, when you Google my father (try this, if you happen to know his name), you get several hundred articles involving his work, his area of research, various papers and seminars, and his two labs. And then, several pages in, there's the blog of a former lab technician. I'll refer to him as J. It was hilarious, and over the year or two that he worked for my (often-absent) father the blog mentioned various work-related incidents involving people I knew, including, obviously, my own father. Which led me to a second conversation.

Me: Hey dad, do you remember J.?
dad: Who?
Me: J. He used to be one of your lab technicians.
dad: Oh, J.....he's gay.
Me (thinking to myself...please let that not be the only thing you remember about him): I know he's gay. Did you know he had a blog that mentions you and the lab?
dad: Yes, I found that ages ago. How did you find it?
Me: I Googled you. Or rather, K. Googled you. How did YOU find it?
dad: Oh, I Googled myself. (At which point I started laughing hysterically and had to hang up).

All this reminded me that, when I started my own blog, I would leave out people's names. I would make my pathetic little blog as difficult to find as possible, and I would try to focus only on two things important to me: food and literature, nothing else, not things that make me crazy at work, not relationships, not the neighbors, not the remodel of my new place or my ability to get lost anywhere. I'm not entirely sure what I hoped to accomplish with this blog but I wanted to put down my thoughts on food and literature, things that I have loved for as long as I can remember and have remained important all my life. A journal of sorts. Maybe people will read and enjoy what I've written, maybe they won't. (I have the sneaking suspicion I'm the only one reading this). It doesn't matter. What matters is that I am writing again, after a long drought, and writing because I love the feel of putting words down, of sifting through experiences and memories, the feel of the keys beneath my fingers. Not because I have to write 2000 words on a novel I hated or a work of art I didn't understand. It's just me. And a blank white space waiting to be filled.