top of page
Search
Writer's pictureTaylor Gilliatt

Ground Zero

And here it is! My first stab at making a blog post.

To be completely honest, I’ve never followed a single blogger. I had never even thoroughly read a blog post until recently when I started doing more research into what blogging entails. The most exposure I’ve had to it is from the movie Julie & Julia, which for some weird reason I am obsessed with. The main character Julie creates a blog to hold her accountable for cooking every recipe in Julia Childs’ French cookbook. She puts herself up to the challenge and updates the trials and tribulations she faces in response to her cooking addiction. Keep in mind, this movie was filmed circa 2009. A lot has changed since then, and not to mention, that was a movie. It’s safe to say, I knew and still know next to nothing about blogging.

What I do know is that I’ve liked writing for as long as I can remember. It has been a passion of mine that I have put on the back burner because it’s as natural to me as brushing my teeth in the morning. I never gave it much thought until I realized I probably do this an extraordinarily odd amount for it only to be considered basic, routine care. No one sits in her bathroom for hours on end tending to her dental hygiene, but if she does, maybe she should stop and wonder if her infatuation is something much bigger.

Before this, I resorted to Facebook as an outlet for a select few of my pieces. It took me a long time to feel comfortable with sharing even one post there because I never want what I say to be forced down anyone’s throat. I don’t want anyone to feel bombarded with my thoughts or my words, and to boot, Facebook is not the place to be consistently posting what I intend to be sharing here. In short, if you are here, you yourself navigated to this blog and are actively choosing to read it.

When I bounced around the idea of starting a blog to my friends, one of them asked me, “what will the theme be?” I thought long and hard about this. I Google’d “tips for starting a blog”, and every single article and YouTube video urged me to find a “niche but not too niche” theme. I spent weeks thinking about what this space will compromise of, and after much consideration, I came to the conclusion that it will be where I post my little epiphanies. Can you put a theme to epiphanies? I don’t think so. The nature of epiphanies is that you don’t know what you don’t know until you know it.

I have a lot of thoughts that only ever see the inside of the “notes” section of my phone. In the times I’ve shared these thoughts with family and friends, I have realized that we all share some of these little epiphanies, and I am (only sometimes) blessed to articulate them into cohesive messages. If what I say resonates with you, know you are not alone. If anything, at least I feel your pain, happiness, and everything in between. If what I say holds no weight inside of you, you are still just as valid. I am one person with a single experience sharing what clouds my mind on a regular basis.

As for the name of my blog, it may seem a little strange. “In a pinch” usually means you’re in a hurry or in a bind. Generally speaking, we don’t like those situations because they cause friction and uneasiness within us. On the flip, though, a lot of people don’t know that “Pinch” has been my nickname for almost my entire life. The only person who has ever called me that (and the only person I will allow) is my dad. There’s a whole backstory to why he started calling me Pinch, but nonetheless, twenty years later, he still does. It is the one name he has always called me. If I ever happened to hear him use “Taylor” growing up, he meant business, and that’s how I knew I was in trouble.

To me, “Pinch” is really significant. I made this blog to share what holds valuable weight in me, and a lot of times I feel like I’m in a bind or in a place of uneasiness before I have the revelations that I do. So, if you put two and two together, “in a Pinch” really sums up my life.

With all that said, I would like to make a few disclaimers:

  1. I have always felt that I have no original content of my own— that none of my thoughts belong solely to me. They are regurgitated iterations of both the wisdom I’ve gathered from others and observations I’ve made throughout the 23 years I have been here.

  2. These will most definitely have grammatical errors and other mistakes sprinkled throughout. Try to sift through the inevitable flaws.

  3. Things will get deep and sappy probably pretty quickly. Though I will share a range of different little epiphanies and moments of truth, please know that I do not know SO much. I have learned that I will probably never be right; I will only get less wrong as I grow older. Nothing I say may be “true”, but if it holds weight in you, that is your Truth, too.

To end my first post, I will leave you with a poem I wrote a few years ago that still resonates with me today:

It’s been a slow pile up

Piece by piece

The words slip through my pores

Enter my bloodstream

Imprint on my DNA

I am not me

I am the words that fell from their mouths

And sat in the air

Until I walked by and my skin

Found the treasure of the syllables

The echo of the sentences

Little by little

I become whole

The words patch up the open wounds

And fall into place

So when I speak

Don’t give me credit

Thank my skin for absorbing the wisdom

My ears for hearing the words

My brain for remembering the importance

For I am not me

But a collection to read

If you are someone who likes to read, follow along! I have not a clue where this is going, but I promise it will not be boring (my fingers are crossed behind my back in case you indeed do think this is boring).

See you in the next one!

270 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page