I started this blog over a year ago. I didn’t know exactly where it was headed, but I felt inspired. What I wanted was to give myself more structure and freedom in my writing. At the time, Iris was four, and Orlagh was eight-years-old. They were in school, either part-time or full-time, and there was a rhythm to my nights and days I hadn’t seen yet. I wanted to write more often about the things I couldn’t stop thinking about: family, motherhood, city life, and culture. Writing was a priority again, and I wanted to do it around life as I knew it.

As I write this I’m reflecting on the first month of fall. It’s shaping up to be a nice one and already it feels different from recent years. Our two kids are a little older and, for the first time in a long time, I’ve been thinking more about how I want the next few years to look. Certainly parenting and being a good partner play huge roles. But what I’m really talking about is the ability to seek out more of what interests me at this stage in life. That after many years of being fully focused on being a mom, there’s a little more time for me now (wow), and a huge desire to figure it out.