All my life I’ve been a creature of habit.
At Cheesecakes Unlimited I always order a smoked salmon salad. At La Cabana Mexican Restaurant I either order carnitas tacos with a side of guacamole or two cheese enchiladas.
When I fill my car up with gas, I always buy a lottery ticket. During the holidays I always make challah, English toffee and eggnog. I play it so safe that I don’t just embrace the familiar, I cling to it as if consistency and predictability were life rafts of security. I never really analyzed what I thought might happen if I let go. I just didn’t go there.
For those who just found this Web site (or We site, as I’m inclined to call it), let me recap the ways in which my work routine changed since a little more than two months ago:
I was fired from the position I enjoyed for a decade as a newspaper opinion columnist and food writer. (I am in such a new frame of mind that I really don’t want to muck through it all. If you want to know the details, read back blogs from early November.)
I was pretty stunned and depressed to be bucked from my newspaper career. Joe, my son in the Czech Republic, said I should write a blog, just to get back on the horse.
Blogging was one of those things I’d sworn I’d never do, along with a bunch of other foreign activities, like getting a tattoo.
But Joe pushed, and set up my blog. So I did it. To my surprise, it wasn’t as difficult as I thought. I hunkered down and settled into a groove.
At the time, I admitted I had no idea where the blog would go, or for how long. I figured I’d focus on food, maybe write once a week or so. First, I thought I’d kick back and take a little break.
The break never came, because within a few weeks the blog grew so big and so popular that Joe, along with our Redding friend, Jim Gore, and his wife, my friend Darcie, got busy designing a bigger, better Web site. It allowed more traffic, more content and more links to more information about weather, road conditions and other news sources, among other things.
That was the middle of November. I invited you to make yourselves comfortable and take in the expert Q&A columns, the guest speakers, and photographs. Within a few weeks, we added death notices, the community forums with hundreds and hundreds of posts.
I figured we’d grow old, and so happy together, here on this Web site, or “We site” as some of us are fond of calling this place.
I regained my footing again. I wrote food stories and opinion columns, much as I did when I worked for the paper. But this time, I had more freedom. I even took food photographs and learned to post them, and was just learning how to develop slide shows.
I could have stayed here for a long, long time.
Guess what? I can hardly believe what I’m about to tell you, but Food for Thought is on the move again. Jim, Darcie, Joe and Bruce (my husband and copy editor and business manager) are at it again.
You’ll see exactly what I mean as soon as Saturday.
Donigreenberg.com’s new Food for Thought has the same address, and the same banner head, but it’s undergone a huge remodel, starting with a newly constructed, broadly expanded home page.
Instead of one story that takes up the whole page, as our stories do now, Food for Thought’s new home page will offer myriad, simultaneous entry points into my food stories and opinion columns, plus more guest speakers, plus more Q&A experts, plus an outdoors component, plus a daily alert, plus press releases, plus one of my favorite new segments that features some readers’ stories: Village Voices.
This change is not something I – the person who seeks the predictable – instigated.
As always, I give the credit to you for asking questions, making suggestions and encouraging us to do more. Your interest and enthusiasm encouraged us to follow your lead.
Soon, you’ll see advertisers and underwriters’ names here. In my dream, financial support may one day allow this gig to move beyond our current, all-volunteer staff to a place were we can contract with reporters to bring even more information to you on this Web site.
That’s my current plan. But I have no idea how long that will take, or if it will even work.
In the meantime, I’ve traded my former steady-as-she-goes life raft for a slick new surfboard.
Together, we’re riding this wonderful, powerful wave to our e-village, a destination that holds great promise and adventure.
Surf’s up. Let’s go!
