The first post

A lot of this is repeated in the “about” section but hi it’s ori and this is my blog :)

I’ve been talking about or thinking about starting a personal blog/portfolio site for like over a year now. It’s time. In 4th grade, I had my own newsletter that I would make for my teacher and classmates every week. It featured an article about something I was interested in, music recs, an op-ed, and sometimes a short story. I’d print a bunch of copies and leave it on everyone’s desks every Monday.

Later, I would write for my school newspapers. I really liked contributing to one of my professor's travel blog one summer in college. I've been missing that feeling of publishing something, even if it's as simple as this. I was also highly inspired by other friends and acquaintances' blogs and lowkey stole a lot of their ideas.

I think part of why I didn’t start earlier is that a while ago I wanted to make a Substack or something more “professional” and journalistic, with a clear point-of-view, and all that. Something I could pitch and sell. Something I could brand. But I don’t always want to be a brand. Sometimes I just want to be a person. 

I write for myself all the time anyway. I wanted to have somewhere to put some of it. This is not a professional project. This is a personal one. My writing will not always be the best quality. My ideas might not always be profound. I’m not going to edit for grammar. I am okay with that. That is kind of the whole point. My main objective for this blog is just to have fun!

I will just write about whatever I want to whenever I want to.

I am trying to get back to that 4th grade version of myself who would shamelessly stand over people’s shoulders to make sure they were properly appreciating my newsletter. 

If literally no one ever read my blog, that would be fine with me. But I know some are/will, so thank you and welcome! I don’t really like to post on social media so I think this will be a fun alternative way for people to keep up with me, especially if I end up going away for a while.

The final reason why I haven’t started this blog sooner is because I was kind of scared about the process of registering a domain. But now I have one! Yay.

Also, I was going through all my old college essays and had a lot of fun reading them. I worked really hard on them and it feels like a waste to just have them sit in my Google Drive. So I will archive some of them here!

I might also put a creative portfolio section in. I’m not 100% sure yet, because I might make an enitrely different site for that since that would be a professional project. But maybe I’ll put my samples that I wouldn’t want to include in a real portfolio but that I think would be fun here. Stay tuned...

If you're wondering about my domain name, it's my first name obviously and my middle name. Many of you might not be familiar with my middle name, which is Jael, it's legally spelled Yael but, what even less people know is I don't like the letter Y so I have always spelled it with a J, which is one its spelling variations. It is pronounced phonetically like Yael, which sounds kind of like yuh-elle.