Let’s go back to the beginning…

Well here it is, my very first blog entry. After years of contemplating about starting a blog (even if it’s solely for my own enjoyment and nobody actually reads this), I decided to create one yesterday on a whim. I’m still learning the ins and outs of how to make this blog exactly how I have envisioned it….which is, as sort of a mashup of things that happen in my every day life, funny and inspirational stories, yummy recipes that I use or want to try, kid-centered news/tips/survival stories (as I am a mother of one and aunty to MANY) and current things I am obsessing over or have been obsessing over for years. We’ll see how things go…but before I start to think about the future, I figure I should give you a little overview about my past.

I was born in Salem, Oregon as the first of three kids to my loving parents; Hawaiian born and bred teachers who had moved away from home for college and then decided to not move back. If you’ve ever met someone from Hawaii, you’ll notice that often times they LOVE the Pacific Northwest and you can actually find a lot of Hawaiians (or just plain “locals” as we refer to born and raised Hawaii residents) in Oregon and Washington. Anywho, I grew up with my parents and younger brother and sister in an upper middle class neighborhood in Salem where I loved school, was active in sports and enjoyed spending time with my friends whenever possible.

I’ve always loved to write and tell stories. From as far back as I can remember, I would dream up stories and tales in my head and then jot them down or write long entries in my journal about schoolgirl crushes, drama with friends or how my parents “just didn’t understand me”. For a time, I even wrote an ever-evolving story with my childhood best friend. There was just always something so appealing and satisfying to me about putting words down on a piece of paper. Seeing a finished piece of work brought me so much happiness.

My relationship with words and expression changed to some degree when I entered high school. Shortly after starting my freshman year, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent a mastectomy then simultaneously went through chemo and radiation therapy. My mom got through all of it like a warrior and was declared “cancer free” by the end of my freshman year. During that time, I started to use words as a way to cope with my feelings about my mom’s diagnosis and cancer fight. I was the oldest of three siblings and felt that it wasn’t my place to verbally voice my fears about all that was going on. So I wrote it all down; and I continued to write about it for the rest of my high school years. In my junior year, I took a creative writing class and for one of my assignments I wrote a short story that was based on my mom’s cancer fight and how our family coped with it. I was real proud of it, and I gave a copy to my mom as part of her Mother’s Day gift that year.

I continued to use words and stories as a way to transverse and get through life. I went on to college at the University of Hawaii-Manoa and was thankful every day of my love for writing when it came to the endless amounts of homework, reports and research projects. The invention of Myspace and Facebook became another way for me to write little blurbs about my daily events or random thoughts that came into my head. When my mom passed away after a reoccurance of cancer in 2008, words again were my savior as I went back to writing in a journal to deal with my feelings.

And now today, words and my love of writing are a part of my every day life when it comes to my career. I work as a social worker for the State of Hawaii and if that job title doesn’t say “paper pusher” and “report writer”, I don’t know what does. It can be tedious at times, but at the end of the day I love what I do and I feel that I am truly helping people.

But still, my need and thirst to write and be creative was not satisfied. That brings me to this blog. I’ve always loved looking at other home grown blogs and knew that I could do that too. I hope that people will stumble upon this blog, wonder what it may contain and then find something useful or inspiring or am able to just get a good laugh out of something I post. I believe that everyone has something (or some things) in life that bring them true happiness and then ultimately, closer to their bliss. While there are already so many things in my life that bring me happiness, I feel that writing this blog, or really, just creating this blog has brought me closer to that bliss. I can’t say how often I might post on here, because really daily life will dictate that. But I have made a promise to myself that I will make this into something spectacular…even if I’m the only one that sees it that way.

So until inspiration hits me once again, I will leave you with a quote: “When writing the story of your life, don’t let somebody else hold the pen.”

~Megan