blog anniversary & a new beginning

i was paging through my blog today not knowing what i was looking for until i bumped into my very first post and realized that it's been exactly a year since i started this blog.

the blog anniversary is perfect timing since i've been contemplating more recently on what this blog was meant to be and has been, and feel the need to strip off the subtlety that often eludes everyone but me. (no matter how smallish one's readership is, a conscientious blogger needs to be honest if she can't be entertaining.)

this blog is no longer called "samedi, the immigrant dog." the human-canine experiement (as i used to describe the blog, see picture on the left) has ended with the conclusion that samedi and i don't match, and i'm not fit to have a dog at this stage of my life. it's time to move on.

while this blog was originally set up to document my "new and exciting" life with the dog, it only stayed on the doggie subject for a couple of months and inevitably evolved into a journal of random topics. looking back, it must have been the last holiday season (i blogged almost everyday in december) when i realized the healing power of a blog -- you can tell from the keywords i created around that time (see pic).

curiously, that purpose of the blog has stuck with me. this has become a personal blog about the small and uninteresting life of a woman who is traveling between cultures trying to find a balance, a private journey of a heart coping with love, loss, communion and solitude. sociologists know that nothing is purely personal, and feminists empower by turning the private into the public. so by blogging, i hope to offer honesty and openness -- i can't promise what my readers will gain from it, but i hope it will keep me sane and somewhat anchored and, paradoxically, not self-absorbed.

with that said, loud and clear, i have to confess i haven't been diligent in offering nudity of my soul, or of anything for that matter. (last time i came close, it was my first bare-bear entry i think.) needless to say, it's a difficult task. excluding the questionable assumption "who wants to see your naked soul?", it's simply hard to be honest and open when one's unhappy. but difficult doesn't mean impossible, so i'll try harder.

tomorrow i'll start a new series/label...