smiling on foot

Hello and welcome to the smiling on foot bloggo! I do so enjoy to blog.

I had been blogging on a free blogspot blog from 3/05 to 7/09, but it became old. I wanted needed to take it to the next level! I consider myself a pretty tech savvy person (email marketing is my current career), so buying a domain and hosting a legit blog is long overdue for my standards. The old blog was fun, it was free, it went through a few different names and a few different templates, but it was the minor leagues and I couldn’t lie to myself for any longer. (It also lost its luster when I realized my ex was patrolling my online dating adventure posts and had to make it password protected in ‘08.) So here I am on a real live domain with a fancy wordpress template and I couldn’t be more pleased. I have a bit of experience with web design and a bit of experience in writing so blogging has become a natural hobby. Plus – I have stuff to say, dammit! You will find that I’m quite candid in my posts (and not always ‘smiling’ either).   :)

The feet in the header are indeed my own and that tattoo is real. I’ve worked in the same building for a little over a year and I still run into people in the elevator who point down at my left foot and ask, “Is that real?” And I answer, “No, I have a team of talented elves at home who assist me with daily foot art before work.” Is it really that crazy to fathom how someone could tattoo a smiley on their foot? It’s very innocent compared to many other tattoos. The smiley (or ‘Happ’ as he’s known in most circles) has been with me since Fall of ‘04. I’ve collected smiley face paraphernalia since college. Trust me when I tell you that once you start to collect something with a particular image, all your friends and family will give you gifts with your new favorite icon. When I graduated, I could’ve opened a smiley store. Now I love me a cheerful smiley face… so simple, so retro, so positive… but there is such a thing as smiley-overload. Soon after graduating in ‘00, I found my limits and it’s been a more respectful and loving relationship ever since. The smiley was inked on my left foot in Boston’s Harvard Square with my former roommate and current long distant friend, RB, at my side. She held my hand tightly as the vibrating needle pressed into my metatarsal bones, causing slight waves of nausea for a total of 20 minutes. Not too shabby. I will forever intentionally purchase shoes that show off Happ’s bright yellow smiley face!

I wanted this blog’s title to convey a feeling of movement or travel since the basic essence of a blog is not unlike a memoir… prose that provides an account of a life’s journey. And just to fulfill my inherent narcissism, it of course needed to represent me! Smiling on Foot can be thought of as traveling through life on foot, but with a smile. Now that I think of it, I’m fortunate to have two smiles to take with me through life’s ups and downs! We all need all the help we can get, right?

I hope you enjoy the new bloggo. It was sad to abandon the old, but it will remain on blogspot and continue to be password protected. Once I adjusted the settings to be a friend-only blog, I sort of went willy-nilly with using people and place’s full names and I’d like to protect them from coming up in searches and such. I will be more mindful with this super public blog. I will also try to update on a consistent basis and provide interesting topics for everyone to comment on… not just the friends from the friend-only blog. We’ll see how it goes! Thanks for stopping by!

Blogfully yours,
Elle Kay
XOXO