Once upon a time I wrote from the heart. Every post was laden with the uncensored emotion of the moment, the angst and the turmoil that left me breathless in a dark hallway alone in an empty house in Syracuse. I turned to writing to relieve the pain, and my first blog became cathartic. I wrote about picking up after life fell apart, how I eased the pain with too many pots of coffee before I’d fill that same mug with wine. I wrote about abandonment and all that transpires when you are unexpectedly left, utterly alone.

I wasn’t concerned with protecting the guilty, and the things that I wrote became a narrative that I couldn’t un-write. I became, for all the Internet to see, a broken little girl whose fragments were more entertainment than real life. After 4 years of writing from the heart, I deleted the entire record of my life at that time and decided that it was easier to create who I wanted to be, rather than what I had become.

DC Minute has been cathartic in a different way – it has been the mirror of our relationship, and it is a constant reflection of who we try to be. I am a writer, and my means of understanding the world is most often through the swift touch of a few keys. However, in an effort to shed a dark past, I have worked tirelessly to create a perfect present – at the expense of authentic and genuine writing.

Yesterday, I went into the office and sat on Scott’s lap, which is a sure sign of frustration. I couldn’t articulate what was wrong, so I laced up and ran through back roads in the country to clear my head. When I got back, I jumped into bed, grabbed my laptop, and let my fingers fly. The result was the first post that I felt was an accurate reflection of this new life.

The response I received was overwhelming, and I am so grateful to have friends far and wide who could appreciate the truth and encourage it. I thank you, so very much, for your comments and your support.

I sat with a friend last time I was in DC who begged me to find my voice on the farm. I had a golden opportunity, she said, to feel the whole of this new life and write it for US. It’s our story, it’s our life, and it’s perfect in its imperfection. To hell with word counts, optimized images, SEO and tags. Sometimes honesty truly is the best policy.

However I believe that after muddling through the dark, it’s my job to help shed light. To pick up others and offer positive energy whenever I can. This place won’t be riddled with the frustrations of our new life, but we hope to couple our date nights and adventures with the pitfalls of real life, and to be honest when we have them. Our mission in starting the blog was holding ourselves above the mediocrity that often comes with getting comfortable in a relationship, and inspiring others -no matter what age or where they lived – to do the same. Date. Dance. Eat. Drink. Love. Laugh. Repeat. Be it in DC, Western New York, somewhere else in the USA, or across the world.

Our date nights will now reflect more of the narrative, our adventures will be told through a more honest lens and I won’t be afraid to divulge the truth. Our posts will be about what we actually are doing, and not how we hope to paint it. And now when we look in the mirror of this place, the reflection will be a more accurate depiction of our world as we live it.