BLOGPOST: Welcome back

Just wanted to write a quick post to say welcome back, and to let you know I’m still here! When I moved to California last year for college, I planned on updating this blog regularly as a way to keep in touch with friends and family back in New Jersey. Not sure what happened, but somehow the year passed by, and I (accidentally) abandoned my website. But I’m back! xx

I’ve had this website for about four years, and I go through phases of loving and hating it. I originally started this platform to share my journalism / multimedia work. I was writing for the Huffington Post (still do!), co-hosting a radio show, and running my charity, all while in high school. I was also a varsity cheerleader, serving on the Ronald McDonald House Charities Teen Advisory Council, and working with Microsoft as a YouthSpark Advocate. (I didn’t have much free time).

Anyways, I’ll bring you up-to-date because my life has changed a bit! I’m in my sophomore year of college now studying journalism, although I’ve also taken interest in anthropology, gender studies, and nonprofit management. I moved cross-country to Los Angeles about a year ago, and it’s still the scariest thing I’ve ever done. I remember I moved here on a Wednesday, and my mom left the following Tuesday. I cried for the next three days because I was all by myself in a city where I didn’t know anyone. I spent my entire life in the same small town, so moving to LA was a little crazy. But Los Angeles has grown on me, and at the moment, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been working on redesigning and updating my website, and I’m so excited to finally share this revamped version with you all. I kept all my old articles and posts up, (even though I am tempted to delete the cringe-worthy ones), because it shows me how much I’ve changed. My writing and reporting has gotten better, I’ve had more opportunities to travel, my nonprofit has grown, and I live in a beautiful city. Also, I got my braces off somewhere along the line, and if that’s not self-improvement I don’t know what is.

After this post I’ll be updating my blog regularly (or at least that’s my intent). I have so many different blogpost ideas in about 3 separate notebooks. I would like to publish something once-a-week, but I’m reluctant to put that in writing in case I forget one week and people begin rioting. I don’t know why, but I have this weird fear about putting my goals on the internet. I feel like if I don’t meet a documented goal, the entire world will go into mayhem and some sort of rampage will begin. Cities crumbling, stock markets crashing, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt getting divorced (that already happened, but still), ebola breakouts, atomic clouds, and somewhere in the distance a suburban midwestern housewife gazes out her window and sheds a tear. All because I forgot a weekly blogpost and broke my commitment to the internet. I’m imagining 50 years from now, someone is going to find me and be like, “You said you were going to post every single week until the end of eternity, YOU SAID IT RIGHT HERE ON SEPTEMBER 28, 2016.” So yeah, disclaimer: I’m not sure I’ll post every single week. But I’ll try!

Currently, I don’t have too much to update you on because many things are in the works (I know, I’m so vague and ~mysterious~). I can say that I have an article coming out with Universal Orlando soon, which I am over the moon about. I wrote a “Teen’s Guide to Universal” last year, which was published on Universal Orlando Resort’s official blog. Once my newest article is live over there, I will definitely share the link. The next few weeks are really busy and exciting, and there’s a lot happening in my life throughout the month of October. I think I’ll make a separate post with more of an update, but in the meantime, many people have been asking me about my work in the nonprofit sector. Angels of God Community Outreach, the 501c3 nonprofit charity I started, is still open and making a big difference in the local community of southern New Jersey. You can learn more about the amazing things Angels of God is up to through their Facebook page. Even though I live in California now, I am still very much involved – it’s like my baby! I’ll always be a part of the organization. Although I’m not as hands-on (except when I fly back to NJ throughout the year), I still run the internal management aspects of the organization. In addition to this, I do regularly volunteer with charities in Los Angeles and recently have been spending time at Zahn Emergency Housing in Downtown LA, as I missed the hands-on aspect of volunteering.

Well, that’s pretty much everything. I hope you like what I’ve done with my little corner of the internet.