Greetings!

Welcome to my new blog. For those of you who used to hang out with me over at Michèle’s Hangout, I thank you for following me to my new location. For those I’m meeting for the first time, it is my pleasure to have you here and I hope you’ll make yourselves known by leaving some comments. Feedback is always welcome, and so is a quick hello to let me know you were here.

In case you’re wondering why I started this new blog, when I’ve maintained the other one (fairly) consistently since 2004, I’ll give you two answers. The short answer is that it was time.

The long answer is that, as some of my past readers know, the old blog saw me through some crazy up-and-down days. There were good times, there were bad times, there were even some dull times thrown in for good measure. I covered a lot of topics: cats, chocolate, music, writing, friends, dreams, a few travel experiences, health issues, divorce, and starting life over. I’ve posted pity parties and celebrations. I loved my virtual Hangout, and it gave me a chance to meet a lot of folks I wouldn’t have otherwise had contact with. But that period of time, from 2004 to 2009 when I made my last entry, is a time that I’m ready to put behind me. I will always remember those years as times of rapid and dramatic change. Some aspects of those days I wish to carry with me for now. There’s a lot of useless baggage, however, that I have decided to leave behind and I no longer want to have the contents of that baggage up for general, public display. I’m a vastly different person than I was a year ago. And far, far, far different than I was in 2004. The Hangout simply no longer represents me the way it once did.

In deciding what to do about the old Hangout, the choice I made was to remove all content and start over. There were some posts I would have been willing to leave up. In fact, there were far more posts that I would have left up than would have taken down. But, when I was considering which to remove, I saw that many of the remaining entries wouldn’t make full sense without the ability to make reference to previous entries that I would have otherwise removed. So, to solve the problem of disjointed entries, I decided to simply pull everything down. Now, I have saved the entire blog—comments and all—so if on the off chance there’s a favorite entry you’re interested in re-reading, just let me know what it is and I’ll email you a copy.

I think you may notice that The Good Life feels a bit different from the Hangout. It’s definitely brighter and, hopefully, that corresponds to my new attitude on life a bit better than the darkness of the old site. Sure, I could have used this same template over at the Hangout and started fresh over there, but somehow, on a psychological level, having a new address has allowed me to really make a clean break from all that I needed to make a clean break from back at the old address. This new place is all about the good things in life. Not a denial of the negative stuff that we all go through, but a celebration of the positive stuff that helps us to get past it all.

So, here we are. A brand new, fresh blog ready to be posted on. It’s like opening a brand new notebook full of clean white sheets of paper. So much empty space to fill. So many possibilities. I can’t wait to get started!

Life is good! Let’s celebrate!