Signed, Sealed, Delivered

*FYI- This blog has been moved to: http://caseycupcakes.wordpress.com.*

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I've been waiting for this as long as I can remember. More specifically, it was about this time last year when I told myself I was going to start religiously blogging my experiences. I never did, until this moment, and it feels euphoric.

Last October, I hit a wall. Mentally, professionally, socially -- everything in my life felt like it was going nowhere. The roommate who was living with me at the time had been living in LA for only a few weeks, but the anxious, superficial nature of the city had started to drive her crazy almost immediately. "The traffic alone is enough to make someone go mental, and everyone seems like they are unhappy, just waiting for something great to happen and change everything" she said. In one sentence, she had described life as I knew it at 27, and I felt like a train hit me when I realized I had been that unhappy person, in my own hometown, for as long as I could remember.

By November I had resigned from my job and scribbled "MOVING DAY" in big red letters on my calendar. On January 15, all of my possessions were to be loaded into a U-Haul truck and I would be making my way to Portland, Oregon in the pursuit of new adventures, friends, seasons, inspiration and happiness. A month before I left, I set up this blog as a means of documenting my new adventures, but picking up my pen (and hands) was impossible and I constantly avoided it. Making a departure from family and friends who had become permanent fixtures on the shelves of my life was difficult, and I wish I had blogged about the transition I underwent while uprooting my life and detaching from everything I knew to be true.

Aside from being a huge procrastinator, I'm a slave to my own fear when it comes to writing, even though I know it has been my calling since I was a child. As a writer and general loudmouth throughout high school, I left an impression on my classmates, particularly one whom I recently reconnected with while she was here on business. "Why aren't you writing? You have so much to say!" Heather said over dinner the other night.

"I, I don't know. I mean I do, and I guess I'm just afraid."

"What are you afraid of? You are SO creative, people will read if you write, if only because they are your friends and they love you!"

"I constantly think about running out of ideas, failure, judgement, and not being smart or interesting enough."

"I know we haven't seen each other in 10 years, but I know you, Casey. Just do it! What's even worse than taking the chance is not taking the chance."

She was totally right, it was nothing I hadn't told myself before, but hearing that conviction come out of someone who has truly seen me and known me for almost 15 years resonated like a bell. The next couple of days, we walked and talked around the city, feeling like no time had passed since we last saw each other. Experiencing Portland with someone who had never been here before made me fall in love with it all over again, and justified my reasons for packing up and leaving Los Angeles.

New adventures...



friends...



seasons...



inspiration...



...and happiness.



My goal as a writer - bottom line - is connection. I plan to use this blog as a springboard for contributing to the wavelength of joy that makes the Universe go 'round. If I can relate to just one person, make someone smile, then everything else is just frosting on my cupcake. Thanks for reading.