Explication

Having recently returned from France and absolutely ignoring my blog that I meant to keep while I was there, I've decided to try to make up for my negligence and start blogging again. Of course, I'm not going to have anything particularly interesting to talk about because I'm not off gallivanting in foreign countries anymore, but I also have a lot more time to write now that I'm home and spend nine hours a day online thanks to my ridiculously easy but overwhelmingly unproductive job at the Geddes Language Center.

I have always enjoyed writing and have also always been preoccupied with, even fixated upon, with the preservation of memories. I see my former blogs as a sort of snapshot of myself at various points of my life. I love being able to look back and see where I've come from, how I've changed, and how my former self has shaped who I am now and who I will become in the future - in a way that a photographic snapshot never could. This blog serves to further my addiction to the analysis of self development and obsession with temporality that has always driven me to hoard memories like a mental packrat. This may or may not be a good thing. Most likely not. It's going to happen regardless.

So, to explain the blog's title: The Coffee Milk Crossroads. I'm fast approaching my senior year of college and finding myself at yet another crossroads in life at which the familiar avenue of Academia intersects the fast-paced and frightening freeway of adulthood - the storied "Real World Road". But having returned from Paris with a fresh set of eyes that see the world anew, a heart that has been both strengthened and made vulernable by my experiences, and a more developed sense of awareness and direction, I find myself at another set of crossroads, one where questions of morality, self-worth, future plans, and cultural identity point me down many different paths.

So, why "Coffee Milk"? When I was a kid, coffee milk was a regular staple of existence. Every day at lunch, you made your choice between coffee, chocolate, or plain milk; the obvious selection was always coffee. But until I got to college, I never realized that coffee milk was something that we only drink in Southeast Massachusetts and Rhode Island. This simple revelation threw me for a loop - this beverage that had been such a mundane and reliable part of my childhood now became a piece of my cultural and regional identity without my even knowing it, just like saying "wicked" and "bubbler". As I've come to encounter a wider and wider spectrum of people and places, I've learned more about my own identity as a New Englander, an American, a woman, an only child...all of the perameters by which I could define myself. But now, at this crossroads of personal and professional development, I'm questioning more and more what I want my identity to be.

Through the progression to independent adulthood, I'm naturally growing farther from my parents, my family, my hometown, and my humble coffee milk roots. My definiton of "home" now has such varied connotations. The old cliché goes, "Home is where the heart is". But my heart lies in so many places and with so many people. Will I remain true to my New England roots, even if I decide to move to a different part of the country after I graduate? Will I remain true to my American roots, even if I decide to move abroad later in life? How does my childhood self relate to myself as of now, if at all? Is all of this even worth thinking about? Probably not. But it wouldn't be me if I didn't.

So that's your introduction. Expect more rambling entries such as this one in the future - I've got no theme for this blog - just life and thoughts and random foolishness.