I'm back!

I started this blog more than a decade ago, in 2012. In my very first post, I summarised the reasons for starting this blog:

I wanted a space to write about the emotions and thoughts that my travels and life experiences bring up. Also, I believe that we are always changing, always growing, and I wanted a space where I can write about and explore what is important in life and my own path of self-discovery. I wanted to have this space so that my family (who are far away from me) can feel connected to me and so that someday my children can read it (if they want) and understand how their mother was when she was younger.

Well, I didn't end up having children, and over time I stopped writing about my life, travels, and experiences here. Instead, I began using it as a repository for my recipes. That's all well and good, but to be honest, I didn't enjoy writing recipes that much and it became a sort of chore.

There are many things that contributed to cessation of blog posts about my life & experiences. A lot has happened in the 11 or so years since my last post:

• We moved to Melbourne shortly after getting married.
• We tried having children, including many rounds of IVF.
• We became vegan/predominantly plant based.
• Max started working as a software engineer and his career took off like a rocket.
• I became a Partner in the law firm I was working at. Then I quit law altogether.
• I became a software engineer and experienced being a graduate at a big company.
• I had many medical procedures, including radiation treatment for a (benign) brain tumour.
• Max stopped working for an employer and started his own projects.

Life has been a roller-coaster for sure. In and amongst all those, I lost the appetite & energy for blogging.

• The last years in between 2014 and now have been tough for Max and me.
• I felt depressed at times, stressed and time-poor.
• I felt that my writing skills were embarrasingly bad, and that no one was reading the blog anyway so why do it. Secretly, I was low-key relieved that people were not reading the posts.
• I felt that blogs were dead.
• I got worried about privacy and unsure about putting personal information and photos on a public blog.

We are at a different stage in life now (more on that later) and I wanted to bring this blog back to life to record the experiences we have as we enter this new life-stage. As I was going through old posts, to fix up the photos etc, I realised how precious those posts are.

• They captured our life from 13 years ago, and reading them brought back wonderful memories and so many feelings.
• I also realised that the experiences, trips and days that I blogged about are the ones that I remember! The other have sort of disappeared into the nooks and crannies of my brain somewhere, or been filed away gathering dust in some old cabinets.
• Another thing I realised is that I have aged. Omg, I was so young back then! And I knew so little of the world. There is a post where I referred to dragonfruit as 'weird pink fruit' 😂
• Sadly, it also looks like with age I've become somewhat less energetic, less curious and less full of wonder. I used to post about beautiful flowers, leaves and critters I saw. I found joy in small, everyday things. Now, I just seem to take those for granted. Or maybe it was just that those years were the first years of living as an 'adult' on my own and exploring the world, my surroundings, and finding my self. It was all new and exciting. Or it might be that all those stressful work days, anxiety and medical scares over the years took a toll on me. Whatever the case, I seem to have lost some of that spark. I'd like to reignite it.

So here is to re-igniting the spark for life, the joy of being alive, and recording cherished memories of this precious life.