“Congratulations, you’ve decided to start a blog!” I imagine this is the first line of Blogging for Dummies. I haven’t actually purchased this book, but I probably should (and still might). I’m not really sure there is a cool way to start your first blog post…perhaps a self-important introduction? A favorite recipe (lots later, promise)? A shout out to your mom (Hi mom!)?

“Cool” is probably not my most accurate attribute anyway so we’ll just start here: My name is Laurin. I love to cook. I love to travel. I like to write and I really love to read. Books are some of my very favorite things, but a fair amount of what I read these days is on the internet, specifically blogs. I find it endlessly fascinating to glimpse the lives of others through my computer; their food, their trips, their thoughts on life’s most pressing questions, like whether the cookie dough in ice cream is actual cookie dough or just delicious congealed chemical swirls? I know I’m not the only one who questions this…

So naturally, reading and enjoying enough blogs led me to consider that perhaps I should join in and create my own. It would be a creative outlet, I could share recipes, and travel stories, and pictures of my adorable dog! Which naturally led to me thinking of a million reasons why that was a terrible idea. Did I really have anything interesting to say? Would anyone like my recipes? Would they care about places I’d been? What if no one cares about my life, or worse, what if they don’t think my dog is cute? That last thought led me to realize just how absurd these fears were because here is my sweet puppy Renly

and I’ve yet to meet someone who didn’t find him cute. So I decided I should start a blog, then I decided that I shouldn’t, then I decided that I should…and so on and so forth…for M.O.N.T.H.S.

Then one day, after yet another back and forth internal debate about blogging, I opened up my favorite distraction, aka Instagram and I kid you not the first thing that popped up on my feed was one of those annoying inspirational image quotes that said “You know all those things you’ve always wanted to do? You should go do them”. I know I know, clichéd, but also true. Best case scenario: I enjoy writing this, you enjoy reading this, maybe you even make (and hopefully enjoy) one of my recipes, we become friends (yay!) or at least internet friends which is kind of weird but still pretty neat. Worst case scenario: I came up with a lot of insane worst case scenarios but realistically, the worst that could happen and actually affect my life is that I do not enjoy blogging and it becomes a chore. In which case I would just, well…stop, which is really not such a bad worst case scenario. So here I am, another girl with a dog, and now a blog. Just what the internet needs, right? Probably not, but maybe it is just what I need, and I think that will be enough.

– Laurin