Photo by the author ©loiteringinthemargins

It’s been a week now and all the bravado I felt on that first day has slowly disappeared. I got a handful of emails from strangers wanting to help me build my blog, wanting to help me reach a larger audience, help me build my brand. They all wished me a good day so I think it was all very legitimate. On the up and up as they say.

It’s been a week of sitting at my desk and staring out windows and eating way too many chips and submitting resumes and driving to town for groceries. I live in a forest on a mountain. I am mountain folk. I am rural. I was born city and then I was suburb. So I have been all the things. Ask me what I miss the most and I will tell you “sidewalks and sky” – which by the way, would have been a good name for this blog. Sigh. We have no sidewalks here. And to see the sky you have to go out onto the road where you can see past the two hundred foot trees. “Are they really two hundred feet high?” you ask. I answer, “I think so”.

There are times when I can’t believe I live here among nature. I think when you live so close to the land, the land becomes a part of you. You learn it’s ins and outs where you thought there was none, and realize that you can never learn it all. The weather can turn on a dime and you learn to tread slowly. At least I did. But like I said, I was born city, so concrete was also a part of me. It still is. It was my beginning. A person can be both. Concrete and land. Another good name? Sigh.

Anyway, here is a few things I wanted to be when I was a kid loitering in the streets:

• A journalist
• A movie reviewer ( I didn’t know the word “critic”)
• A runner in the Olympics
• A social worker ( I wanted to help teens, especially)
• A teacher ( I wanted to teach English )
• I wanted to own a deli
• I wanted to publish a magazine

See you next time. Until then, I continue to loiter.