Hey, hi. My name is Ashley, and this is not my first blog post, but it sure looks like it.
I actually started this blog almost 5 years ago, as a way to find some creative release. At the time, I had just moved from San Francisco -- in my native California -- to Atlanta, GA with my then fiance (now husband.) I had left behind a band that was making me feel progressively marginalize; a job that paid me peanuts and that I did not love but had surrounded me with coworkers whom I did; a city/area that I'd started to get bored of because I didn't know any better and was getting increasingly priced out of it anyway; and the only part of the world I'd ever known enough to call home. I knew California so intimately I'd begun to feel alienated from her, in the way you feel like you don't know your parents, or just assume your friends will be there. I left all that for a place I'd never seen, in a part of the country often made fun of by people like me who'd never actually been there. I left for love, though I hated, at the time, to admit that to myself because my views on feminism, and love, and strength, and bravery were in all caps and lacked any nuance. I left and I worked full time at a swimwear store while getting my Masters. I settled in to being married, I made some friends. I suffered an almost complete creative drought in my songwriting, largely borne from insecurities I'd thought I'd gotten over but in fact had only buried. I started this blog, as a creative release when the songs wouldn't come to me, though I wrote nothing of any real value, just took pictures of outfits, mused about some of the shit I liked, and waited to see if anyone would send me anything for free. I never let myself be happy there because I had decided before the plane even landed that I couldn't be and there were just enough condescending "bless your hearts" and "have a blessed days" and gentile side-eye my way throughout my time there to boost my already decided case against the place. I exhausted myself swimming against the current, convinced it was the only way to not drown, forgetting everything I learned as someone who actually grew up on the beach about how rip currents actually work.
But all of the little episodes that comprise that story could fill post-upon-post of their own. Fast-forward to now, and I've moved again -- for work and for love -- to Virginia, with the same man who got me to move the first time. I'm a full-fledged librarian, and I've recommitted myself to music and to giving myself a shot. I'm a little older, definitely wiser. At the very least, I'm calmer. And it occurred to me that, whether I had anything really to say, I had some things I maybe kind of wanted to to say. So I reopened this little corner of the Internet. I deleted all of my old posts, because I don't think any of them gave much to the world, and the girl I was when I wrote them, while a girl who existed and whom I doff the cap of acknowledgement toward, is not a girl I remember with particular fondness or am dying to have a conversation with (but those posts are all still in a draft folder, should I decide to revisit anything she had to say.) But I kept the name, because the librarian-ness and the cheekiness of the original idea definitely still apply.
So what kind of blog is this? I don't know. It's not a fashion blog, though I love clothes and might post pictures of myself wearing them sometimes. It's not a lifestyle blog, though I am alive and probably have some kind of "style" of being so. It's not a cooking blog, though I love food and I love cooking. It's not a political blog, though I'm very political. It's not a feminist blog, though I'm a feminist. It's not a pet blog, though there will probably be lots of pictures of my dog looking ridiculous. It's not a relationship or marriage blog, though I'm in a relationship classified as a marriage. It's not a music blog, though I love and make music. On and on. All of these things will probably show up here. So, if you like (mostly) vegetarian food, music, clothes, lefty political agendas and are a friend of intersectional feminism, you might find something you like here! And if you don't like those things, well. The Internet is a big, ugly place, so I'm sure you'll find something.
At any rate. Thanks for checking me out, and sticking around if you decide to.
<3Ash
