What's that about?

Back in 2006, I was fascinated with blogging and started sharing my experiences as an exchange student in Eastern Europe. I was 22, fresh out of my sheltered provincial life, having flown an airplane for the first time. I could not put two words of English together, yet somehow had this urge to tell my story. I kept at it, diligently, for a few years. 18 years later, I have lived in ten countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, I traveled to a couple dozen more, I’m raising a third culture kid and I’ve stopped writing entirely. Life got in the way and I grew tired of this frenetic quest to share more, always more, online. For a time, privacy on the internet felt like an afterthought. It was overlooked, even frowned upon. Now that's a luxury many fail to appreciate. I am off social media and I probably won't get too personal here, but I wanted a small space to keep a foot in the digital world.

For those wondering, "pata pata" (パタパタ) is a Japanese onomatopoeia used to describe the gentle sound of air or light footsteps. Somehow it was one of my daughter's first words. We used it when food was too hot and we had to flip a piece of paper or a book over it to cool it down. And somehow that stuck with me, and became "pata papa", a handle I've used online for a while now.