This is a real blog!

If I had a nickel for every time someone has asked me if I have my own blog or told me I should start one, I wouldn't necessarily be rich, but I might be able to buy something from the dollar store. That may not sound like a lot, but that's roughly 20 times, which is a fair amount. I wouldn't call it annoying, because the number of times I've actually considered starting a blog has been close to equal. It's a natural line of thinking, in my opinion: you enjoy writing, so why not create your own, no-expense platform by which to roll out your creative pieces? It makes sense. But it's taken me a while to get to the point of actually doing it. Maybe it's because I have more writing experience, creative exercise, and a little bit of life to drive me to what finally feels like a starting point. Or maybe it's just plain motivation.

I am currently writing to you from my bed on a day off from work over holiday break. My husband, Sam, and I had, what I would consider to be, our first official family goal planning session yesterday afternoon, in lieu of the new year quickly approaching in just a few days. During this time, he asks me the question:

"What's something you want to do this year? It could be anything."

With questions like this, I tend to suddenly blank on everything I have ever wanted, for example, when I get asked what I want for Christmas or my birthday. I know I'm not the only one who experiences this phenomenon. Sam is great at helping me when I have these brain-drain moments. He breaks things down into small steps.

"Do you want to read more?" he asks. "Do you want to write again?"

Those stuck out to me, as well as his later question, "What's just—something fun you want to do?"

And after he waited patiently for me to contemplate these questions, I finally said, "I really enjoyed writing for my fiction class I took earlier this year, and I loved getting to do that photography class from last year."

So we determined Victoria wants to:

- write

- take pictures

Great. We're getting somewhere.

"What about a blog?" he proposes. There's that blog, again.

"About what?"

"About anything. And maybe some post some photos, too."

"But I don't like taking pictures just with my phone. I miss the camera I got to use for my photography class. And I don't have one of those."

This camera was a very expensive, manual DSLR Canon camera, that I got to borrow for free from my university's tech department, specifically for the course. It's one I dream of having one day, but wouldn't even consider purchasing in this current season of life, figuring out finances as a newly married couple and coming up on my student loan payments in the new year.

"I have a camera," he says.

"You do?"

"Yep."

"Is it manual?"

"It can be."

"Is it a DSLR?"

"Uh huh. See, look—I took....... this picture with it, and this one." He scrolls through a couple photos on his laptop, and then proceeds to look up the camera so he can show me. It's not a Canon, but it's a camera that would do the job.

So I contemplate this blog thing.

"How about—start small," he continues. "A bi-weekly blog post, and—would it be too much to have a couple photos to go with each one?"

"No, I don't think it would be. That sounds reasonable."

My original plan was to use my pre-existing website that I had created for a class a while back. But I remembered that I was using that as part of my web portfolio, and if I added to it, that would go against my plan of wanting to keep that as it's own separate entity—a project for my archives—to say, "I took this course that surrounded a website/writing project, and this is what came from it."

So here we are. On this new, blank canvas for, well, just me. Not a class assignment, a job search tool, or a favor. It's not anything necessarily professional, but a place for creativity to blossom and skills to stay sharp. Welcome to it.