I have to admit that my blog was the unintended outcome of a particularly hard time, that saw me stuck at home without neither work nor money. My main concern was how I was going to feed my family, pay the stack of overdue bills and honor the mortgage with the bank that looked to me like a leech, ravenously sucking the last drops of blood running through my veins. I felt uncontrolled anger, a sense of hysterical rebellion against the world, deep sorrow for myself.
I felt dejected, my days were a total disaster.
Being allowed the luxury of time (something that has not happened for years) I forced myself into the role of the efficient housewife and started to tidy up all the existing spaces in the home, a habit that still has a powerful relaxing effect when I’m nervous. I spent endless minutes wondering how to place socks, maniacally dividing them by color, length, fabric. Equally, I often indulged hours in measuring the necessary inches to stack towels in the bathroom closet, after re-washing, drying, ironing, and finally planned workout sessions by moving furniture and furnishings all around. What havoc when my husband started finding forks in the drawer where for ten years he had instead placed plates into.
Funny to think how strenuous housework saved my life, though I have to say that after a few days religiously devoted to intense cleaning and reorganization of the cabinets, the whole house was shining like a mirror, all the drawers were amazingly in order and the last speck of dust had miserably emigrated, a far better option compared to the destructive force of my vacuum.
Despite my best efforts to avoid facing the real issue, the hard question incessantly recurred, hammering my sleepless nights: what am I going to do NOW?
That was probably the exact moment I started blogging, mainly about my feelings, something that came naturally as a way to let the stress out. After the first writing scribbles (that I had the decency to keep for myself only), I started to seriously think about what I could have done if I would not have my job back. The main options buzzing into my head were
- relocating to a different country to look for a new job (not very exciting but quite realistic)
- embarking on an adventure world trip and writing about it (not very realistic but quite exciting)
Abruzzo4foodies was born the moment I realized I could find a way by combining my passions for travel, writing, food, Abruzzo. I chose to write in English either to practice language and make my blog as objective as possible: ideally, my targeted audience was non-Italian and non-Abruzzese, a set of organized travelers looking for independent travel tips and eager to learn more about my beautiful region.
Several months after running a personal blog, I attended the 1st blogger meeting of my life to figure out how to move forward. I realized that any form of blogging aiming at producing honest and captivating content requires
* focusing on a relevant topic
* a good deal of research
* a pragmatic approach to writing
* obsessive attention to details
* participation and engagement
* commitment to reliability
Being involved in Let’s Blog Abruzzo was for me a wonderful experience and a powerful source of inspiration from like-minded mates, mainly because I had the opportunity to learn and develop a few skills I missed, being a newbie to the blogging world. I have a clear idea of what needs to be improved in my work, in the next years the challenge will be to make the most of all the useful advice and try to optimize and grow my blog.
PS: I finally got my job back but blogging remained so far, proof that hard times can lead to new opportunities. It’s time to work on it now and I’d love to hear from you, please share comments, ideas, suggestions to improve the blog!
Abruzzo4foodies 
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