The impetus for my first venture in blogging was a desire to document and disperse the great (and not so great) happenings of the semester I spent in Oxford my junior year of college. When I returned to the midwest life went back to normal, the blog died, and so did any aspirations of travel writing. Then I moved to Derby, England and life seemed remarkable and memorable once again. I have since started a new blog every time my life moves to a new phase – whether it’s working in a grocery store bakery, teaching  English to a French child, or learning what it really means to grow up in Kansas City.

In addition to sharing my life and experiences with people who care about that kind of thing, blogging is my way of writing down the “rough stuff” and playing with my thoughts. I haven’t worried too much about typos or plot lines. I tell myself that “someday” I’ll come back to that. Someday when my life has settle into a rhythm, when I miss the chaos of moving and traveling and not knowing where my next job will be. Someday when I’m “really” writing and wanting some material to play with. For the time being, though, there is blogging.

And now there is graduate school.

And San Francisco.

Oh, San Francisco. Certainly such a phase in such a place deserves its own blog. As I was thinking of what I might call said blog, one thing came to mind over and over again. Not a word, not a phrase, but a song. A song I could not for the life of me get out of my head. And as I thought about the lyrics I decided they were true and in some ought to be incorporated into this blog, this phase, and this place.

I have pondered a bit on the concept of losing or leaving one’s heart in a place or with a person. On the one hand, we cannot help the heart-quickening pull of attraction or the inevitable attachment that comes from long nights of wine-induced conversation or habitual cups of morning coffee; but on the other, we can also choose who we will love and how often we will let ourselves do that thing, be that vulnerable, go that deep. I like being known, being familiar. It allows me to feel at home when “home” is more an idea than an address. In the past four years I’ve had no fewer than ten addresses, and at each of them I have learned to love someone. Consequently, there are now pieces of my heart living and moving all over the world.

San Francisco is the place I have come to collect them. To remember them, document them, and share them. A large piece of my heart was here already, but that is a story for another time. For now, I am here, in a place I probably should have been months ago, seeking to recover what has been lost.