Introduction and Welcome!

Greetings, salutations, and all other manner of welcome! Come in, kick your boots off (unless you're surreptitiously reading this at work or a very dull dinner date or some other less interesting place where they might notice you kicking your boots off and start asking awkward questions), and get ready to join me on an ADVENTURE. 

My name is Asta. (Well, that's one of my names anyhow; I'll cover that next time.) I'm a writer, though you won't have heard of me (yet!) as most of my writing has been fairly anonymous thus far. But no more! Here I am, internet! Gaze upon my words and, er... well, that's really all I'm after, is the gaze in the first place. You can react however you want after that.

This particular adventure is, in essence, me trying things and then writing about them. Everyone loves a vicarious bit o' bravery and/or personal growth and/or hilarious failure that makes a good story, right? I aim to provide all of these in probably equal measure. I also desperately hope to encourage all of you to try more new things yourselves. You can do the scary thing! Go for it! (That's what I tell myself before I try things, and unbelievably, sometimes it actually works.)

This blog idea in particular was born of a goal I've had for a couple years now to become less stagnant and more adventurous again. When I was a young spry thing, I used to do all sorts of mad things, and have all sorts of mad adventures, and meet all sorts of mad people, and I loved it. But then I got older and tireder and burnt out and far too used to hermiting. My main exercise began to consist of bending over to pick up my cross-stitch needle when I dropped it, and my cat began to account for the majority of my conversation with other living creatures. I was bored and miserable but also lazy and hopeless and unwilling to do anything about it. Also, there was that whole plague thing going on.

But then, one fateful day way back in the interminable plague days of early 2021, I was visiting an old friend on the community farm where she lived near Airdrie, helping her make a garden, and she mentioned one of their caravans was for rent for the summer, and jokingly asked if I wanted to rent it. Delirious with the momentum of having Done Something With My Day for once and awash in the heady novelty of being literally anywhere other than my flat, I said yes as if possessed before I thought it through whatsoever.

It was exactly what I needed to remember how much I loved being alive.

Within a few months, I began to adventure again. Slower than before, but still, I started to feel more human, more like myself. Since then, I've re-embraced new experiences. Last year, I learned to play the drum kit and joined a punk band at 40. This year, I started learning how to cook by inviting a dozen people over at short notice and promising to feed them food from New Zealand without having any idea what New Zealanders eat (pavlova and cheese rolls, apparently). Last week, I cut my long, curly hair into a pixie cut, just to see what it felt like (final level of regret is yet to be solidified on that one).

Best of all the new adventures though, I enrolled in a full-time writing degree. Now in my second year, they've told me I need to start a blog, and have a website, and actually put my writing online with my name attached. So here we are. Another first. 

Onward to adventure!

Next post: What's in a Name? (New Thing: writing publicly)

Following post: Panic at the Hob! (New Thing: learning to cook by hosting an outrageously unrealistically ambitious feast)