While I have yet to publish a second article, twice in the past two weeks, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find myself featured on the Matador Network. First, Matador Goods editor, Lola Akinmade notified me that I was on My Favorite Books: Member’s Pick for week 1/18/10. The post included one of my all time favorite quotations:
“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”
- William Blake
And this past week, I was very flattered when I found a Matador member to watch article written by Matador Network managing editor, Julie Schwietert.
As you’ve probably guessed from my blog name and the quote, rejecting limitations is a major theme with me. Some limitations are best eradicated with the help of others, so I’m extremely grateful that I’ve found a door unlocking community at Matador that is incredibly supportive of writers. Thank you!
A little history:
If you didn’t know me during my senior year at my university, you’re probably not aware of my self-proclaimed blogging pioneership. Back in the days when people still used Friendster, Myspace was just getting started, and Facebook barely existed, I had my own LiveJournal, which I referred to as a “web journal”. “Blog” wasn’t widely used yet and was considered to be a silly new term.
On LiveJournal, I chronicled my senioritis adventures and the mishaps of a quarter life crisis that followed my graduation and entry into the “real world”. The first sparks of future travel blogging came in a few posts that recapped a winter holiday trip to visit family and friends in Ghana. Later, after volunteering in Brazil, wanting to document the amazingness of it all for a travel-oriented audience led me to Travbuddy.com.
From there, I branched out to WordPress.com and now here I am in my own little corner of the interweb, trying to get comfortable with using WordPress.org. For a few weeks I’ve been tweaking and adjusting and trying to learn a little about css and plugins in order to get this site to reflect my style. I’m feeling pretty happy about the way it’s turned out so far.
But more importantly, my mind has been consumed with travel and I’ve been brainstorming ideas for future blog entries. I can’t wait to get started. So welcome to Girl, Unstoppable, I hope you have fun here. I definitely plan to!
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
- Anaïs Nin
This week I became a published writer. A reworked version of my blog entry “5 Travel Memoirs by Women” is now up on Matador Goods. Check it out here.
When the Matador Goods Editor, Lola Akinmade, sent me a message saying my piece was up, a felt happy and… weird. As much as I’ve always loved expressing myself through various forms of art, putting myself out there has been a huge obstacle for me. Of course, like many other people who struggle with the same issue, a fear of failure (and maybe success as well) keeps me from pursuing creative feats. But I’m dismantling the wall of fear, brick by brick. This year has been a good year for taking small steps to achieve bigger things. After all,
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
- Lao-Tzu
