It seems strange that an online writing space could seem so significant.  After all, it’s just a portal for my words - meaningless really.  What I write (and what you read) is not impacted by the URL you type to get here…or is it?

I’ve been writing online for just under nine years (my first entry on my ancient geocities webpage is dated December 2000, officially branding me an online journaling dinosaur. Blogs didn’t even exist, back in the day).

For almost a decade I have been spilling my soul onto a computer screen, offering what I have and being given so much more in return.   Through this process the very act of blogging – of taking my words and releasing them into cyberspace – has become an integral part of the art and therapy of writing for me.  A piece never really feels done until I hit publish and let it go.

Crunchy has been my online home since the fall of 2004 and in the space between then and now everything has changed.  Time has a way of doing that, of shaking us up, molding us anew, twisting us around until we’re facing an entirely different direction than we’d ever imagined.  For quite some time now, this space has not felt quite right.  It represents another space, another time, a different focus.  Even though I told myself over and over that the words were all that mattered, I was reluctant to write here.

Beyond the seismic shifts in my personal life over the past two years, I have also been growing as an artist.  Owning and naming my creative self. Exploring what my words and photographs mean and how they can work together to fulfill my desire to create change, inspire people, build community.  I wanted a space that would represent my desire to explore all of those things, a fresh start.

And so, from now on I’ll be writing at {peace. love. free}.  Inspired by the Amy Steinberg song that I once wrote about here, I hope my new online home will be a place of inspiration, of community and a place where I can dig deeper into my writing and my personal photographic projects.  I’m still going to be me   (and I’ll still probably be a slacker blogger) but I hope my new blog gives me the space to stretch out, relax and see what happens.

Hope to see you over there, please add me to your reader and take a moment to say hello while you’re there.

PS: I’ve still likely got some bugs to work out, some fonts I want to change, etc - but I figured I could keep fiddling with it forever, or I could just start already…let me know if things are not working right!