Consumer & Creator

Recently, I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, The Mom Hour, when hosts Meagan Francis and Sarah Powers mentioned that podcasts were a "new medium." Um, no. I've been listening to KCRW's Good Food podcast since 2005 (back when you had to hook up your iPod to your computer to download the latest episodes from iTunes). And I have been blogging since April 2002 - when Blogger was a startup company and I paid for a premium account because I was worried they might go out of business (thanks, Google, for buying Blogger!).

Needless to say, in the past several years I haven't been creating much. Not coincidentally, I gave birth to my first child in 2009 and my creative energies have been focused on nurturing the now two little ones in my life and my own career change into the field of college counseling. During this time, I was a consumer of information on parenting, education, and college counseling. I realized how I much of a social scientist I am at heart (there's a reason why I consume pop culture through Lainey Gossip), and learned about points and miles to aid family travel. I became better at parallel parking, got to know greater Taipei better (including its many parks and indoor playgrounds), and am somewhat proficient at whipping up quick meals my children will actually eat.

As amazing as all this has been, I also feel like I'm finally emerging out of a dark tunnel as my kids age out of early childhood. I've long wanted to post, and have composed blogs in my head, but until recently, didn't feel compelled, given competing demands on my time, to sit down and write it out. In the past year and a half, I've put more focus on nurturing myself - resuming exercising regularly, reading for personal pleasure, and baking. My word of the year is 'balance' - and I'm hoping to spend more time being a creator of content this year, here and at Nomad Foodie and VirtualB the Reader.