The Big Intro...

This is the post where I'm supposed to tell you all about myself. Where I'm from, what I do, how many degrees I have, what the purpose of this blog is, what my purpose in life is, what I believe YOUR purpose in life is, how I look this way, how I learned a thing, how I cooked a thing, how I built a thing, how I did all those other things that blogs are used for these days.

But I don't feel like doing any of that today. Or any day, really. (<---LIES. I have a blog, don't I?)

Coffee Farm, Paju, Gyeonggi-Do(커피팜, 파주시, 경기도)

Instead, I feel like telling you all that I am sitting in a cafe on a beautiful summer day. I have a delicious vanilla latte and a tolerable banana muffin. There are buses going by outside, children playing at a park somewhere, and the weather is beautiful--hot, balmy, but not humid or sticky. It's a gorgeous day and I'm loving being alive right now.

The fact that the cafe is in Paju, South Korea, and I am from Denver, Colorado, which is over 6,000 miles away, is immaterial because this is not a travel blog. Or a "life in Korea" blog.

The fact that I write a lot, and am in fact writing in this cafe, is immaterial because this is not a writing blog.

The fact that I can cook a mean meal, do a mean head of hair, take a nice picture, and do a bunch of other things that most reasonably competent adults can do is also immaterial because this is not a craft, hair, art, or competent adult blog.

What this is, is a blog about being happy and living my life to the fullest. I've had other blogs before...you can read one of them here if you wish. That blog was about my adventures, partially in England and partly within my own head at the time. Long and stupid story short, I only really decided to be happy and fulfilled--despite circumstances and whatever kind of victim complex I've been encouraged to develop because of them--a short time ago.

Someplace in Talinn, Estonia

So in 2011 I went on a backpacking trip that started in Estonia, of all places. I was with a very good, very dear friend of mine and we were excited because we just aren't the kind of people who are supposed to be able to do things like take a month off of life and gallivant around the world. It was nearly impossible to do, but we'd saved and planned and lucked out and there we were, thousands of miles from our origins, walking through a plaza in Estonia.

We were talking about just that and how much we were enjoying our lives just as we passed the thing in the photo above, and suddenly I blurted out, "Some people live paycheck to paycheck. We live paycheck to life."

It was funny, but also very true. I've realized that I'll never have the kind of limitless money, time, or resources to do all of the things I can dream of doing. But I do have what I have, and with a little thankfulness, appreciation and a willingness to try, I can do far more than I appear to be able to. I've managed to embrace that without putting anyone down or becoming a rampant conservative Republican(which seems to be an uncomfortable trend among people my age in the Obama years.)

So yeah. Living paycheck to life. Realizing that money is not my limitation and life is my opportunity. Realizing and exploring the idea that deep pleasure in life and classy behavior do not preclude a social conscience or the development of a kind heart--in fact, they can be related. That's what this blog is for. Sort of.

If I said it was just for showing off what I've been doing and bitching about politics and culture, no-one would read it, right?