Big Effort, and for WHAT?!

I've gained two pounds.

I am distraught.

Does a confessional quality improve a blog's readability?

This is what I've been wondering...

I, like most girls my age (and, for that matter, my mother's age), love Sex and the City. It seems almost facile to account for its appeal in terms of its confessional qualities. That would be to disregard the innumerable subtleties, the painstaking character development, the emotional veracity, the beautiful plotting, and, yes - of course - the shoes. It was the combination of all these elements that made SATC what it was. Yet, without the women's intimate, tastefully explicit chats over egg-white omelettes, would the show have been such a hit? From these conversations, viewers could derive comfort and vindication; 'Yes! That's happened to me! I am normal!'

'So', to borrow one of the programme's few irritating features, Carrie's gratingly idiomatic catch-phrase, 'I got to thinking...'

Should I make this blog a personal - though anonymous - revelatory series? Like, should I admit here that, having gained a hideous amount of weight over Christmas, I am on a near-starvation diet? More to the point, should I confess that this is particularly unhealthy for me as I am a recovering anorexic?

Well, yes. I think I should. I want to write about food, and my love of it. But, inextricably bound by that love, is a pathological loathing of what it does to me.

In order to write honestly, I must examine the ambivalence that shapes my passion.

So that's what I'm going to do.

New Year, New Blog

Hello.

Having never actually *read* a blog (at least not regularly), I am not entirely sure what is entailed, what is expected, how the whole thing works. Consequently, it feels pretty strange to begin this first instalment (is that correct terminology?) with an address... I mean, who is it I am addressing exactly?

My purpose in writing this is, quite simply, practice. One day - hopefully a day in my near future - I want to write professionally. Ideally, I will be able to write about food. Eating out, eating in, cooking, experimentation, developments in the food industry, catering recommendations... My interest in the area is already huge, and continues to grow.

I am cautious about revealing too much of my 'self' in this blog. I am, by nature, open to a fault. My chronic inability to keep my mouth shut is a hazard. Not so much to my friends - as a rule, I am pretty discreet with other people's business (though I cannot make any claims to this being hard and fast - I occasionally f**k up in spectacular style) - but in my own life. Oversharing - I'm hopeless. I don't want to make the same continuous mistake here, causing the few people committed (foolish?) enough to read this thing to exclaim silently (or, worse, audibly), 'Too Much Information!'.

So, for now, this is not going to be immensely personal.

Suffice it to say, I am a girl (I use this word, instead of 'woman', as I feel it better represents me at this stage) in my early twenties, a London native, and recent university graduate.

I am currently temping, and it is as boring an occupation as it is an unoriginal one. However, I'm doing it for a pretty brilliant reason; to earn enough money to travel round the world on what I hope will be a unique gastronomic adventure. More on that later, I guess.

Anyway, this has been as much an introduction *for* me, as *to* me, and I am getting very bored with myself. No doubt you (who? I still think it's weird...) got bored a lot earlier.

Apologies. I'll get the hang of it eventually.

Best wishes, and pretty eating.