I never wanted to be a blogger.

I love writing and I have been a wordsmith forever. As a journalism student and high school newstaff editor, I majored in English in college before becoming a teacher. But I discovered that I could also be a freelance writer and so, beginning in the 1980s, I began publishing newspaper commentaries in the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune, a parallel pastime that I deeply enjoyed over decades while I taught.

Following retirement, my daughter Mollie suggested that I start a blog but I quickly told her I had no interest. After years of writing opinion pieces about personal and topical issues for newspapers, I felt I no longer had a compelling story to tell and I didn’t want to blather about the banalities of a very happy retired life.

But then I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and a compelling story was born. Suddenly, blathering about the banalities of a very happy retired life with cancer is something that I need to do. And I need to laugh, my favorite thing to do. And I need to look ahead to Laughter After.

As my journey begins, my thoughts and updates will live on this blog. I needed a singular platform to share the journey without clogging my two Facebook accounts and remembering those who do and don’t use social media (many).

I never wanted to be a blogger. I never wanted to be diagnosed with cancer. And I never want to stop laughing.