On Eating and Being.

It seems really pretentious and self-centered to write about why I started this blog ("let me blog about why, me, I started this me I me me I me blog..."), but I'm doing it anyway (being afraid to do things because they are too "___," but doing them anyway, is a new theme in my life). My decision to start a food blog was not pre-meditated in any way. It was a whim. I never thought I'd be comfortable enough to write about food, and it's still really hard for me. I don't know exactly why I started it, but blogging has cracked the little nut that is my heart in ways I didn't anticipate.

Writing a food blog feels like it would be the least challenging of blog options. We all eat, we all cook in some capacity (microwaving leftover pizza is a form of cooking, if you keep an open mind), so writing on and taking pictures of food seems really simple. I've always wanted a blog, so of course I decided early on that I could never have a food blog, because it'd be a cop-out, and because I have always had -- and probably always will have -- serious issues with food, weight, and body image. So, instead, I just didn't write at all. This was a poor decision. Read Natalie Goldberg's work to find out why.

Surprisingly, the double-whammy of having "food issues" and being all defeatist about a food blog not being "challenging enough" was what lead me here. I've come to learn that I am not very smart about taking care of myself; I tend to do what I feel I am supposed to do, not what I really want to do. I have even less perspective on what truly makes me happy. In short, creating this blog was a small fuck-you to myself: to constantly telling myself that what I want to do is not what I'm supposed to do, to thinking that I have any idea of what will make me happy or unhappy, to being constrained by what arbitrary limits and restrictions I put on, well, everything.

I'm not trying to make this blog sound huge and important, because it isn't. It's really quite plain, and forgettable, and nothing compared to the plethora of elegantly designed and cohesively themed food blogs dotting the rest of this internet landscape. The fact that it is so unimpressive and small is revolutionary on a personal level, though, because usually if projects don't fit up to my asinine standards of what is relevant and worthy of my time and effort (honestly, nothing makes the cut, so I live quite an anxiety-ridden life of semi-productivity), I drop them, or never begin them at all.

But, a little happy voice in my head (it really is alone up there, amidst all the nasty, viciously hurtful ones) told me to just make the boring, worthless food blog despite its blandness, its poor design, its lack of focus. Just do it, because I can, and because I want to a little bit, and because maybe (god forbid) it will bring to my life some arrhythmic drips of joy. That really is enough of a reason, I now know.

This blog also exists as a form of rebellion from my body hate and food issues. I can write about food, and eat the food I write about, and not feel guilty about enjoying both! Okay, still working on that, but I love writing, and I'm allowing myself to use that love to write about something that brings me great pleasure and even greater pain. I'm not using this blog to work through my hang-ups, but the simple act of deciding that what I eat isn't embarrassing or shameful -- that the fact that I eat at all isn't embarrassing or shameful -- has been revolutionary to me on a personal level. To be a woman who eats and enjoys it seems to be a shameful thing in society, unless you are extremely thin and can brag about your god-like metabolism. To not be this sort of thin, god-like woman and to be writing about food makes me feel brave.

I think that everyone should do whatever it takes to make themselves feel a little more powerful, less oppressed, more positive, and less downtrodden, even if what they choose to do is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things (their personal lives, their families, their country, the world, etc...), and even if what they do has no "ultimate goal." It makes me feel brave to write this tiny blog that no one reads. Sometimes, it even makes me cry a little.

Contributing to your own well-being is like plugging in a small, but fiery, space-heater of hope that thaws your icy, cynical body more and more every time a contribution is made. I have no hopes of fame or improvement or self-actualization. I just want to feel happier and braver. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. Who knows anything about being happy, really?