Meeting at the Mac

Let me start by being honest. I’ve been ‘starting’ this blog since January 2021. I told myself, almost one year into the wildest time my generation has ever experienced, that it was finally time to start writing again. There was no more time for couching it up with Netflix’s greatest hits or hidden gems. No more time for seeing how much tequila I could drink without having a hangover. Certainly no more time for me to continue living next door to the gym without actually venturing inside to workout. 

Spoiler Alert: I didn’t start then. I did, however, go into full swing super spiral planning mode. I generated a list of topics and had a brainstorm map with social media tags and viral videos that caught my attention. I had things organized by topic. I was proud of myself. But I never actually started writing anything. The list grew over the next several years. More momentous events and occasions came and went. More restaurants opened and closed. More concerts came through town and more artists released music. Life continued happening around me, but I stayed still. So still that my desire to write and create was stifled. Subdued to near extinction. And I would remain still until late Spring 2026.

Fast-forward to this moment, today, with you. I realized back in January that I missed my 12 year-old self. For context, back in 1998-99, in the months leading to my 13th birthday, I sat down with an original MacBook (cue the iconic Carrie Bradshaw voiceover) and wrote my first novel. I printed it out, took it to my parents and said, “I wrote this. I want to publish it.” At the risk of dragging you down that rabbit hole of a process, I’ll skip to the good part. I did publish that book. And three more after that. I even wrote a follow up to the last one, but it stayed dormant on my newer Mac once life started to – well, you know – life. That was nearly 20 years ago.

I missed 12 year-old Nicole because she saw a need for better mystery novels or novels in general for teenagers and sat down at that computer to bridge the gap. That version of me was fearless and wanted her inside voice, outside in the world, screaming from the rooftops. After these last few years, I desperately needed to get in touch with 12 year-old me. I decided that in order to find her, I would have to meet her where I left her – in front of her MacBook, curled up with her portable Sony CD player blasting *NSYNC’s debut album, a Yoo-Hoo and her imagination. To be fair, 40 year-old me is posted up at a local coffee shop having a heavy pour of the house Malbec and listening to Beyonce, but, you get the picture. 

Instead of perusing through my endless list of topics and ideas for the one millionth time, I simply opened my Mac, signed up for Squarespace, named the new blog and began writing about the first thing that came to my mind – The Renaissance World Tour. And while I’d love to turn this into a Beyonce Giselle appreciation post, we’ll save that for another time :-). The point is, I started writing. And I couldn’t stop. Turns out that when you’re truly ready to move forward, when you are genuinely tired of standing still – you just simply, move.

So thanks for joining me here at the Mac. I hope that you’ll come back for more of the rants and thoughts I’ve been jotting down in various journals and my iPhone Notes app. I hope that if you haven’t harnessed the best version of yourself and put it to work, maybe my words and journey will give you a boost of confidence to give it a shot. Meet yourself where you are and see where you go.

Til next time 🙂