Here I am, ready to blog. Just sitting here, thinking about the blogarino. Blog, blog, blog.

What to blog about? Well, it”s lovely outside today. Maybe I should leave this for later, and go re-organize my bookshelves. Why does my right pinky toe look bigger than my left? More importantly, are you enthralled yet?

Okay, here”s the scoop: I have long known that I needed to have a website, but it wasn’t until recently that I decided to blog. It’s been strongly suggested to me that I build a presence online so that I can have a better chance of selling my novel to a publisher and promoting it once it”s published—knock on wood, toi toi toi, your lips to God’s ears, [insert additional superstitious protection spells here]…

In my first post, I attributed my reluctance to blog to my introverted personality, but it’s more than that. As I was building this website, I struggled to determine exactly what I should be blogging about. Do I focus on the kind of food- and drink-related content that ties in directly to most of my published work? Would there be a way to incorporate the environmental issues that matter so much to me? And what about my novel? I’ve given the thing more than a year-and-a-half of my life, and it is, after all, the reason I’m online in the first place. But how does a fiction writer approach blogging? Write about the act of writing? Won’t that bore people to tears? Will anyone care to read the ramblings of an unknown novelist? Perhaps, I should focus these posts on the subject of my book? Sure, because a blog about the Spanish Civil War is just the thing to attract big crowds…

In the end, what I’ve decided is not to decide. For now, I want this space to be a work-in-progress, much like my life (or anyone else”s, for that Copyright © 2014 black jack en ligne enlignefrance. matter). When I first started at NBC News just out of college, I certainly didn”t imagine I’d someday write a documentary about East Africa, corral a group of Elvis impersonators, or trek through a Costa Rican rainforest. And I never thought I’d become a magazine editor and food writer or that I’d seriously try my hand at fiction. These things happened as I allowed my career to evolve from one stage to the next.

In college, I was friends with a woman who plotted out her entire life for herself—she knew which high-powered law school she wanted to attend, what kinds of legal jobs she should have, and how long she should spend at each one. She did eventually get into that law school and enroll there, and before we lost touch, she was well on her way to achieving the first half of her master plan. While I admired her single-mindedness (and was jealous of her utter certainty about her future), I also cringed at the thought of plotting my own life out in such excruciatingly specific detail. Once you’ve drawn such an exact blueprint, how would you prevent it from becoming your own little prison? What would be the point of actually playing your role if you already knew everything that would happen to you?

Although it hasn”t always been easy to navigate the doubts that come when you allow yourself some breathing room (and I’m sure the whole process drove my overprotective father a little batty), I’m very grateful that I’ve had the chance to surprise myself along the way. Many of the most wonderful experiences in my life were the direct result of circumstances that I never could’ve engineered, and I wouldn’t trade them for any metaphorical bird-in-the-hand.

So, for now, I’ve decided to approach blogging in this same spirit. If you visit me here regularly, what you’ll find is a little of this, a handful of that, and a dollop of something else. The one thing I promise is to be sincere. The last thing the Internet needs right now is additional snarkiness—I”d say it’s got that covered.

Join me, won’t you? Who knows what we’ll discover together…