Why I am Untitled

Every day on the way to lunch, I go through the Indiana Jones tunnel.  And it is epic.

If you touch the statue on the pedestal, you'll hear the noise of a giant boulder rolling toward you from the boarded up alcove, and then you have no choice but to drop your food and run for your life. But then! Then the snakes that are hanging from the vines on the ceiling will coil around your legs and hold you in place while iron gates slam down to block your exits on either end of the hall! As John Williams' triumphant score rises from the hidden speakers, you will break free of the snakes and slide, baseball style, under the gate, with millimeters to spare.

I'm kidding, of course.

I would never leave my food in the hallway.

Themed tunnels and other things like this are not uncommon in my workplace.  If you look out the windows across from the Indiana Jones statue pedestal, you can see the treehouse, Endor, which has its own (cell phone signal-blocked) meeting room and can only be reached by rope bridge.

 

This is all real.

Every building on campus has its own theme, and the newer the building is, the more elaborately the theme is carried out. Put together, they paint a very eclectic and kind of chaotic picture.  Themes include New York City, wild west, dungeons and dragons (seriously), Asia, jungle, Scandinavia, and hi-tech toys. Not to mention the crazy conference rooms - one of them is designed to look like an air hangar.  I may post tours of individual buildings later, but this post has a purpose besides showing off where I get to work every day.

Part of what inspired me to start a blog were the many wonderful blogs that I read from day to day. Two of them, Delightfully Tacky and Selective Potential, both style blogs, happened to team up to put on an e-conference on independent blogging this week, just as I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing. What great timing, right? So I signed up.

Yesterday, Elizabeth and Tieka did a series of "Blogging 101" posts, and while they are sort of aimed at style bloggers, they had a lot of great information for any type of blog.  The first two posts were all about the one thing that has stopped me from starting a blog in the past: establishing a focus.

I do not have a focus. Right now, these are the things I have ideas to write about: British television, biscotti, snow, a style blogging experiment (though I don't really intend to be a style blogger), the movie Black Swan, working out, coffee shops, worship music, and travel, among other things. Tieka mentioned in her post on theme that the title should reflect said theme(s). Well. I think I did that.

So here's where it all comes together: my blogging inclinations are more akin to the entire campus of buildings - eclectic and chaotic (maybe just chaotic), when I should probably try to pare them down to a couple buildings.  (I apologize for the forced metaphor.  But I really wanted to talk about the Indiana Jones hallway. See?  I get distracted.)

This is why the title of my blog is currently "natalie. untitled."  My hope is that as I go along, a pattern will emerge, and I'll sort of....acquire a theme or two that fit well together, and maybe eventually re-title it.  One of the things I really appreciated in Elizabeth's post on focus was the encouragement to allow your blog to shift with you.  The first step of that is, I suppose, to let what I naturally gravitate toward writing in these first few months define my blog, rather than give myself a box that I discover I don't fit into.

Until then, here are some things to look forward to (or to avoid, if you wish):

• Tonight or tomorrow I will be starting a "Biweekly Biscotti" series.
• The "style blogging experiment" that I mentioned will probably start up in March and last for one to two months. It will involve a lot of dresses.
• Tours of buildings at my work.
• Whatever else tickles my fancy. Just for now.

 a cow from a conference room. because she's adorable.