One Year Ago
One year ago today, I started this blog. Although I had been toying with the idea of writing a food themed travel blog for sometime, like many things, I never got around to it. Then on a freezing July morning when it was too cold to get out of bed, I grabbed my laptop and registered a domain name, sharingatable.net. The process of creating a blog for a non-tech person was maddening and on more then one occasion left me hurling obscenities at my computer screen, but nearly 24 hours later I had something I could work with and I wrote my first post, Safari Girl. It took me another month of fiddling and tweaking the site before it went live.
I originally started this blog because, being far from home, I wanted a way to connect and engage friends and family. I even thought, rather naively, it might help me connect with people in Johannesburg. That increased connectivity didn’t materialize. Many of my posts have very low viewership making interaction or dialogue nil. Instead sharing a table has become my creative outlet – a place where I hone my writing, indulge my nascent photography hobby, and share what I love about traveling in southern Africa. Creating this blog fills the hours (and I mean hours of writing, editing photos, and fixing technical issues) when I am not working; hours that in the past that would have been spent socializing, going to the theater, and eating at every restaurant in DC with friends. It encourages me to keep traveling and exploring instead of giving into inertia and a sometimes very real desire to spend my free time sitting on the couch drinking red wine in my pajamas.
Sharing a table is a public, albeit heavily edited, letter to my friends, family, and strangers about my life in South Africa. Eventhough I know I get more out of creating my blog then anyone reading it will, I hope it will inspire people to add South Africa to the list of places that they will someday visit or at least provide a bit of entertainment. For those who make the trek, I hope it serves as a resource much like a travel guidebook of yore. For me, this blog has kept me sane, pushed me to visit new places because it might make a good story, provided a much needed distraction during rough patches, and ultimately is something I am immensely proud of.
Thank you to everyone who reads my posts. Your comments and words of encouragement are gratifying. To my parents, thank you for being my greatest supporters and for reading every single post. A special thanks to my mom a.k.a. my editor.
One year down, who knows how many more to go!
