Amazing the Traces We Leave

When did I create this blog, anyway? Blogger tells me September of 2007. I have no recollection of that. But that's handy, because I was going to make one today, but it turns out I have this already sitting here like a clean notebook, ready to fill. I suppose there's nothing to do now but get started! 

I have a Livejournal for my personal life and a Facebook for my momentary maunderings. But my Facebook is a transient thing of one-sentence throwaway quips and my Livejournal friends don't want to read exhaustive day-to-day tracking of my life. So why not start something here instead, a little diary of this particularly arid phase of my life. 

Maybe I'll start with a little more about me, just for any wanderers who happen by. My name is Cori, I'm twenty-six years old and married for almost five years. I'm an attorney, but I have been unemployed since graduating law school, due to a combination of location, bad job market, and periods of crippling self-doubt. My husband is a full-time graduate student, and for the past six months, we have lived off his stipend and periodic help from both our parents. While I've been looking for work, I've also been looking for ways to trim our budget ever smaller. The main problem I've had, I find, is a great lack of self awareness. Growing up as we both did, in reasonably affluent families, it's very easy not to keep track of what you spend on life's needs and wants. 

That's where this journal comes in, at least for now. I'll be marking down what I spend, what I cook, and trying to track where the money goes. I won't be posting everything, that's a little more than I want to share, and not all my expenditures are fluid anyway. My bills for rent, phone and internet are the same each month, and even the electricity and gas for the car don't fluctuate much. Food and entertainment though, that's where the traps are. So we'll see what happens.