On May 10th, 2004, I started blogging.
I had been in New York for about six months (albeit with a horrendous travel schedule to California) and I quite disliked being in Manhattan. After the wonderfully warm weather and incredible open skies of the Bay Area, I found Manhattan claustrophobic, dirty and over-crowded. And, to be fair, I was never here long enough to establish any kind of routine to help me feel settled.
I thought a lot about my own attitude and decided to try to focus on the positives. So, I committed to blogging about the best of the city each week. Three years ago today, “My Space In A Place” with the tagline “They say loving a place is all about attitude. Let’s see, shall we?” was born.
I didn’t focus too much on the title (obviously!) or the aesthetics or the logistics (no Feedburner, no Technorati) of the blog – I had a very clear purpose – to start sampling the variety that the city offers and to document it online to make myself see the pluses of the city.
My first post included the following:
On that topic, I realized I need to give big, bad, Manhattan a chance — yes, the winter sucked, but we are past that and I hope a glorious summer will let me explore more and enjoy this city. I’ve heard that it takes about a year to fall in love with Manhattan. Which means that I have till October or to be fair, till May of 2005 (arriving in winter can’t count, can it??!!!).
So, a post a week till October and we’ll re-evaluate, shall we? 🙂
The blog lived on Blogger and I did not list it publicly. I shared the URL1 with family and a close friend who was also adjusting to Manhattan.
With each post I wrote, I started to fall in love with Manhattan – opera, ballet – no, not just ballet, but Swan Lake with Nina Ananiashvili!!, Carnatic music, concerts in Central Park… It was a fabulous summer. Soon, I was missing NYC when I was in California on business. My experiment was working!!
I hit my goal of starting to love NYC by October of 2004. And I was having so much fun with my blog and I kept it up. Finally, in late 2006, after I had quit my commute to California and taken a little breather, I felt ready to blog publicly. That’s when this blog and my Tatvam blog appeared2.
I’ve loved my three years of blogging – I’ve fallen in love with my city, made wonderful new friends and had great conversations!
To my incredible readers, thanks for making this little blog, which started out with only imaginary readers, so much fun! 🙂