Who I Am

[First, to all my regular readers: I decided I should put up a little something to introduce myself to any new readers who might meet me at BlogHer. You may or may not already know everything I'm about to say. If you do, I hope I've written it well enough that you won't be bored. If you don't, well, you learned something new today! Yay, you!]

Hello there! If you are a new reader here at Life: The Ongoing Education - welcome! You may skip this introduction at any time and speak directly to your hostess (that's me!) by saying, "Speak to Lara." If it doesn't work right away, try saying it again, louder. Maybe a few times, and say it with feeling. No, I'm not just trying to embarrass you in front of your family - there are also the beloved household pets to consider.

First and foremost, I would just like to thank you all - all four of you - for visiting my humble online home. Clearly I made an impression on you, and I can only hope it wasn't the kind of impression that required dry cleaning or emergency medical attention. Assuming that it wasn't, you've probably come to check out my site and find out a bit more about me, so that you can then make the important decisions that await you. Should you subscribe to my feed? Follow me on Twitter? Read my other blogs? These are serious issues, I know, so let's arm you with the information you'll need to face them.

Who am I? My name - as you likely know by now - is Lara David. I've noticed some folks have trouble pronouncing my first name, so to clear things up, the first syllable of Lara rhymes with car. Or bar. Or jar. It does NOT rhyme with dare, nor does it rhyme with door. Say it with me now: Laaaaaara. Very good! (Except for you there in the back.)

I am a bit of a youngin' by many standards - only 26. Sometimes I forget how young that really is, and I walk around going, "Ack! I'm already 26 and I've done nothing with my life! I'm not even married!" Then I remind myself to breathe and I realize that I actually have done important things with my life. I've graduated from college, for example - twice even! And while I may be single now, I actually was once engaged for a while. And let's not forget one of the highlights of my life's achievements: I visited the Hooters Casino Hotel in Las Vegas and escaped STD-free. Now that's saying something.

What do I do for a living? If you go through the archives here, you'll find me working as an English student teacher (while attending grad school), a preschool teacher, and a nanny. Starting next month, I will officially be a first-year, full-time high school teacher. I'll be teaching Honors World Lit and Beginning French, and I am terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought. Feel free to read along with my (mis)adventures this year, but be warned that there will almost certainly be some tears. And probably a swear word or two (thousand). In spite of that, I do love teaching and I love working with kids - it's definitely challenging, but then, I believe everything truly worthwhile is.

What's this blog about anyway? Well, I eagerly look forward to being a mother, and I tend to read a lot of mommybloggers, and I've been a nanny a number of times. So you may notice that some of my posts read in that same style, and you can think of me, at time, as sort of a "non-mommy mommyblogger". This post is one of my favorite posts of all time, and talks a bit about that.

If motherhood isn't your area of interest, rest assured, this is not solely about me and my desire to put my uterus to good use. I also write about depression, cutting, and how I've worked - and continue working, let's be honest - through those difficult issues. In November of 2006, I was hospitalized for a severe depressive episode, and you can read about that time by clicking here. If you're interested in finding out more about cutting - what it is, why it happens, etc. - you can check out my posts about that by clicking here. While these are serious issues and might be thought of as "downers" in the great fun world of the interwebs, they are important to me. Even more important is that I know there are people out there who have been strengthened by what I have written here. I don't hide when things are hard for me, but I try hard to remember to chronicle the good days too.

Speaking of good days, it's not always serious topics around here, you know. In addition for being well-known for my "I'll talk about anything no matter how serious or scary it is, so hang on to your hats and glasses, 'cause this here's the wildest ride in the internets" attitude, I'm also known for a passionate love of shoes. Superficial? Yes, yes, I know it is. But damn it, shoes make me happy, and I've learned to embrace that. For two years in a row, I've dedicated a whole month to showing off my shoe collection, so if you'd like to see those posts, click here. If you did, in fact, meet me at BlogHer, I hope I was wearing shoes that bear out my fabulous taste. If I wasn't, I was probably giving my toes a break from some painful-yet-awesome shoes that I was wearing the night before. Please to forgive.

I do hope that you'll stick around and read me here at my main site, but I also want to point you to a couple other cool locations where you can find me skulking about:

I'm a budding photographer, and I'm pretty good (if I do say so myself). I publish photos here fairly regularly, but generally only when they're relevant to the larger post. If you want to scroll through photos without putting up with my verbose writing, feel free to pop on over to my photo blog.

I find religious ideas interesting, especially when I'm working through my own conflicting thoughts and beliefs. Earlier this year, I started a site devoted solely to topics of faith - my own, other peoples', whatever. All are welcome, regardless of religious affiliation (or lack thereof), so long as everyone can be respectful and tolerant. We get some great discussions there sometimes, with lots of different opinions, so please join us here.

Lastly, I am so proud to be a channel editor for the absolutely fabulous Blog Nosh Magazine. No matter what your interests are, Blog Nosh has something to sate your appetite for amazing content. Imagine all the great writing you've encountered in the blogosphere, and then imagine how much great content you MISSED OUT ON because you weren't yet reading a certain blog, or you went on vacation for a couple weeks. Those great posts that fall of their blogs' homepages and are never seen again? We find them and republish them so that you can find tasty content every single day. Find out more about us (and how to be featured) here.

Well, I think I've rambled just about long enough. If you stuck with me through that whole thing, you are an angel and my new best friend. Do you have any questions I can answer for you? Any suggestions for how not to freak out new readers in the future? Any fawning compliments about my awesomeness? Just raise your hand, add your voice, and make me one happy blogger.

Hope to see you around!