The rice is boiling in the kitchen, Scarlett our black lab is scratching in the hall, the commuter traffic is crawling past my street and the runners are panting down the hill across from our front door as they do their final practice runs before this weekend's 10K race. It's rush hour in Austin, TX and I am beginning a new blog after completing my two first journals on e-time. (The hazy, misty, picture of stupas and island volcanoes is last week's reality, but read on).
Prague Outpost, my chronicle of the bohemian life as a Fulbright Fellow in the Czech Republic in 2005, provided me an intro to blogging. What fun! - to communicate with friends and family by posting photos and thoughts from my attic apartment near the National Theatre on the Vltava River as fall turned to winter in that magical town. There were nights when the blog was my major antidote to homesickness and mornings when the blog was my megaphone for anecdotes about cross-cultural misunderstandings, great travel tips, and celebrations of small successes.
The blog languished after I returned to the states and got busy with day to day work worlds. I dusted it off in the fall of 2006 to chronicle a visit to Samara, Russia for the Fund for Arts and Culture of Central and Eastern Europe.
When I began a journey out of my Executive Director position at Austin's best-run nonprofit, Greenlights for NonProfit Success, I was persuaded by colleagues to create yet a new blog...focused on the executive transition process. (You probably know, or will find out in that blog, that 2/3 of the people running nonprofits will leave their posts within a few years, so the blog was intended as a cautionary or inspirational tale). This sounded like a good challenge of introspection and education so I hopped on board the train again with From the Greenlights Driver's Seat. Blog #2 gave me a chance to share my story with my LBJ School students at UT Austin and my colleagues in the nonprofit sector. I enticed my family to read it on occasion by posting photos, but Blog #2 had a limited -- albeit an international -- following.
After I had completed my job transition and turned away from Greenlights, it seemed time to turn my back on blogging. At least that's what I thought. After all my blog audience had dropped to about 100 visitors (special thanks to Janie Hayes who would sign on from Malawi every so often -- Janie's blog/website is much fun!) There didn't appear to be much interest in my stories, photos, rants, or queries...and I didn't think I had much to say or share.
Now though, freshly back from an incredible work-related jaunt in Java (for Psychology without Borders) , I am ready to start anew with a longer-term blog. During a lull in the 30 hour flight to Yogyakarta I tried on dozens of blog names....all quite amusing and double entendre-like. But ultimately I've elected to just name it what it is - Deborah on the Move. So welcome to Blog # 3.......and the question ahead is what will it become?
I'll start with stories of Java...on my next posting. But here's a teaser photo - Borobodur, that amazing Buddhist temple outside of Yogya that captures the essence of my experience in Indonesia.
