Introduction

I never really thought that I would be the type of person to keep a blog, but I guess it's just a natural progression of things. I've been writing about myself ever since my handwriting became legible. Which was actually a result of my hands getting stronger from horseback riding. Thank you to my brother's occupational therapist for suggesting I start what became a lifelong passion. But I digress.

When I was younger, my dream was to be an author. I always wrote stories, but it was basically just fan fiction of my own life. I would write myself into a group of popular kids, or have a boy realize that beneath the bangs and the frown, there was a girl waiting to be noticed. In high school this turned into journaling, chronicling the Life Of An Outsider for what I assumed would later be the basis for a bestselling young adult novel. Well, that won't be hitting the shelves anytime soon.

It took me until college to understand that I was terrible at writing about my life. My main problem was that I always wrote myself as a victim, which isn't a good method. Reason one is because it gets old, fast. Reason two is because it's not true. Nobody is completely faultless in their life story. Everybody's made bad choices. Everybody's been mean or selfish or lazy. Everybody's hated someone. Everybody's hated themselves. I had to come to terms with this in my introductory creative nonfiction class. At first, it sucked. But then it led to me producing better work.

One of the weirdest things for me to see was that people tended to like stories where I was the "bad guy" more than stories where I was the "good guy." Now I'm trying to view it less as "bad" vs "good" and more as "real" vs "idealized." My goal for this blog is to not be an idealized version of myself. Which will be hard, because it's so easy to make your life look better on the internet than it actually is. But I want to be real.

So hello. My name is Anna. I just graduated from college and I have no idea whether I want to be an author or a sports journalist or a teacher or a translator or a world famous mandolinist. I like bad puns and cheeseburgers and washing dishes, but don't tell my mom about that last one. I start a lot of projects that I don't end up finishing. Hopefully this won't be one of them. I probably sleep too much. My life choices have been greatly influenced by Alex Ovechkin. I prefer clouds to sunshine, apples to oranges, and biking to walking. And this is my blog.