Hello

My blogging history has been spotty at best.  For the last six months, I've kept a WordPress blog, about my life with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).  But in the past few weeks, that's been relatively dissatisfying, for several reasons.  I hate the idea of "labeling" myself, especially labeling myself with something attached to so much stigma.  To call myself merely "the girl with GAD" is to deny every other facet of myself.  And although I may be wrong in believing so, I do theorize that I am worth much more than the sum of my parts.

The idea of creating a blog for the activities I love most in life is much more agreeable to me.  I am not the sort of person who leads a remarkable life -- in fact, my life up until this point has been rather unremarkable.  I was born in a small town in Connecticut, in the United States; I had a more or less traditional upbringing; I graduated from a girls' high school shortly after the turn of the century and I spent four years at college out of state, achieving my bachelor's degree in English in 2005.  I moved back to Connecticut three days later, to enroll in graduate studies in History, but was involved in a major car accident two days before I was supposed to begin classes, which set back my studies quite a bit, to the point where I have still not finished.

I spent two years trying to figure out who I was and what I was doing with my life, and that's a time period I'd rather not discuss, for it was then that I started needing medication and counseling for my anxiety.  In 2008, at my sister's request, I auditioned for a play, and was cast opposite a man named David.  We began dating two months after we met, and a year and a half later, he asked me to be his wife.  We were married on November 5, 2010 (Guy Fawkes Day or Bonfire Night, if you are from England or familiar with English customs), and now we live in a very small apartment in Connecticut with our three black cats and guinea pig.

I have been reading since I can remember, probably around the age of five, like most children.  I can read very fast, although not as fast as my younger sister.  I suppose you could call me a "bookworm" as a child.  I still do love to read, but life and college and work and other pursuits have unfortunately relegated it, at times, to the back burner, and I find myself more often than not re-reading books, instead of going out and finding new ones.  The goal of this blog is to encourage myself to go out and read more, and review the books I do read.  My wonderful husband and parents pitched in and bought me a Kindle this year, my new favorite possession, and I have recently joined a book club on a website, so I am hoping that I manage to meet my goal of 100 books in 2011.

I began knitting when I was twenty years old, in college, and spent the next five years halfheartedly knitting away on garter-stitch scarves, until my boyfriend's mother (now my mother-in-law) gave me a book on basic knitting.  That week, I taught myself to purl, stopped being frightened to try new things, and now churn out hats, scarves, baby blankets, socks (my personal favorite) and mittens on a regular basis.  I don't knit often or well enough to create an entire knit-blog, but I do read them and aspire to the level their writers have achieved, so some of this blog will be reserved for knitting, and posts about it.

Finally: writing.  I wrote my first short story at age 8 (something terrible in my day-to-day journal for my third-grade teacher) and never looked back.  I write as naturally as I breathe, every single day.  But again, college does make writing difficult, if not odious, at times.  Getting back into writing that I enjoy is another goal of mine.

So that's all.  Welcome to Read.  Knit.  Blog.  I hope you enjoy your stay.