There comes a time in everyone’s life when it’s time to grow up and leave home.

You wake up in your bed and something doesn’t feel quite right.  Your feet hang over the edge and those Winnie the Pooh sheets, the flannel ones with the pictures of Pooh and Eeyore and Piglet that you’ve loved forever just don’t fit your personality anymore.  The room’s too small and you’re tired of fighting with your sister over who’s turn it is to clean the upstairs bathroom you all share.  It’s time to move out.

It’s an awkward time, a mixed bag of excitement and trepidation, where the world opens up to you and you step into it, albeit nervously, wondering where your travels will take you.  I’ve always found it useful to keep one eye on the rearview mirror to remember where you came from as you forge forward into adventures and experiences unknown.

Well, today is that day.  It’s time to move out.  For the past year or so, I’ve been writing for our hometown website, cutting my teeth, practicing this age-old craft of the written word and trying out a thing or two.   I was an English major in college, but back in the day when I went to school, we typed on a typewriter not a keyboard, and there were no such things as digital anything, at least not that I had the least amount of education about.

When I was a kid I had an Easy Bake Oven.  It was a pretty simple thing really.  You opened a package marked “chocolate cake”, mixed the ingredients with a tablespoon or two of water and… voila! You had a tasty chocolate cake.  The first effort into the blogging world was just that.  Easy Bake Oven blogging.  Write. Paste, Click. Done.

But there comes a time in your life when you have to move beyond cake mixes and try the real thing.  Put all the ingredients into a bowl and try your hand at something new, a new flavor, perhaps, a cheesecake or torte instead of the good old-fashioned chocolate one you grew so accustomed to.

Today’s the day.  I’m moving out. I’m stepping out into the big wide world, excited, nervous, and ready for adventure. 

And as always, I’ll keep one eye on my rear view mirror, just for good measure.