All right, Michael, it’s finally happening. My loving husband has taken to throwing me shade for how much time I spend talking about starting my blog at home. Because I’ve pretty much been talking about it non-stop for years, coming up with all of the best ideas and never following through.

Here are some of the amazing blog ideas I’ve had:

-Best Friends with Benefits – A blog I had Michael convinced for a few days he was going to start with me where we wrote reviews of board games, video games, and other nerdy things like our Sonicare Airfloss that his brother bought us for Christmas one year. God that would have been cute though, right? Look at us:

-The Fresh 20-Somethings – For over two years, Michael and I were dedicated subscribers to theFresh20, a recipe subscription service that plans your shopping list with recipes for 5 dinners every week. On average I would say we cooked between 2 and 3 of those meals a week for the full two years — with many weeks cooking 4 of the recipes. Before we started the vegetarian subscription, I was a meat eater, but by eating great vegetarian dishes day in and day out, prepared by me (well, honestly, usually for me) at home, it was easy to give up eating cow, pig, chicken, turkey and other land animals. My reasons are mostly environmental and political and really, it just seems kind of gross to grind up the meat of a living thing to make food, but I also am well aware that it is crazy delicious. The Fresh 20 was an amazing way that Michael and learned to cook using seasonal vegetables and trying new things without really having to think about it. We prepared Kohlrabi, Eggplant, Rissoto, Polenta, countless soups, salads and preparations of my favorite root: the potato.

–JPBxM3 was a blog using our initials where I would have written and blogged about our wedding planning process in 2013 and 2014  (we were married on July 12 of last year). This was a real missed opportunity. As a queer person, I am critical of the institution of marriage and the privilege it offers many people who partake in the tradition. The history of marriage is a complicated one, though in many cultures it has persevered as a signifier of love and commitment and family. It’s about taking care of one another. Civil marriage was created to signify ownership of a woman by a man, often decided by neither party, but by their family. Marriage has undergone radical change in this country and around the world as the woman’s rights and civil rights movements have fought to attain personhood in the face of adversity. Just over a year ago it was not legal for me to marry my partner in Illinois, though just six months after it became legal, we married each other in front of all of our friends and family here in our hometown of Chicago. Still the scales of justice are not balanced as the Supreme Court is set to give legal same-sex unions to our entire country, civil marriage continues to benefit those who participate and leave behind those who don’t — those who are their own sole support, those who take care of others, and those whose families do not fit the societal nuclear family standard, which has been adapted to include same-sex couples. Even while believing all these things, I don’t think it’s hypocritical for me to have wanted the wedding I had. Marriage is also about love, friendship and family, three of the things i value most in the world. We set out with a simple goal, throw ourselves a party, make sure there’s a lot of love, good food, dancing and beer. We planned the entire event ourselves, without professional help, but with a lot of support in the form of time and money from our best friends and relatives.  It was a spectacular event, something that changed my life forever. You can read the article I wrote for A Practical Wedding about our big day here. Planning a gay wedding was definitely an interesting experience, being constantly confronted with other’s ideas about marriage and gender. I think we did a good job of keeping the planning process stress-free and yeah, the blog would have been pretty darn cute.

–Wood Werk – This was going to be a blog where I chronicled the two woodworking classes I took last year while my hubby was at a web dev bootcamp in Ohio (or as I liked to call it, Computer Camp). The class was from the Chicago School of Woodworking, a neighborhood studio where I made a picture from and this Arts & Crafts style table. My instructors were challenged with essentially teaching 20 newbies how to use hand tools as well as electric saws, planers, jointers, sanders and smoothers. The Chicago School of Woodworking is a real Chicago gem and I highly recommend that anyone interested look into taking classes there. Though I haven’t decided yet, I’m thinking about taking the third of three furniture making classes there this summer, which would start in a few short weeks.

–Homo Where The Heart Is was a blog where I chronicle the exciting life of a queer 20-something market researcher living a relatively privileged life in chicago, falling in love, buying furniture, cooking vegetarian, drinking lots of craft beer and playing tons of board games.

Finally, I’ve decided to shut up about writing a blog and get to writing. So here am I — forcing myself to channel my creativity into actual writing instead of just thinking up ideas about writing. One of the best Christmas presents I ever received was a pen box that had a quote from acclaimed American writer and fellow champagne-enthusiast Ernest Hemingway: “A writer must write what he has to say, not speak it.” So if I am the writer that I think I am, I will do exactly that.

Work From Homo will be a blog featuring many of the ideas I had above, with the added layer that I am now working full time from home (and also traveling for work) as a Director for a technology-based market research start up. The first thing people say when they hear I work from home is that I’m lucky and that they would love to do that, but working from home has it’s challenges. To keep a balance between work and life can be tough when there’s always more work to be done at a start up. I could work 15 hours a day for six weeks and never feel caught up. Self-motivation has never been one of my strong suits – so I challenge myself to focus and deliver on work-related tasks, even when not faced with the tight deadlines that I thrive under.

I hope to use this blog as a place to vent, to experiment and most of all to have fun and fall back in love with writing… all while working from homo.