You Don’t Know Jackie

Welcome!

It’s been a bit of a slow start but I’m finally getting around to writing the initial intro post to give everyone an idea of who I am and what kinds of things you can expect to read on youdontknowjackie.

Firstly, I just moved to Temecula Valley area in October of 2007 from the East Coast, where I was pretty nomadic, residing most recently in New York, in addition to Portland, ME, Montreal, QC, North Shore Boston, Manchester, NH, and Burlington, VT. When I decided to get on a plane with my suitcase and a snowboard to move to California, my first reaction to this new little cookie cutter town that I ended up in was “seriously where am I..” The concepts of planned community, track-homes, mega church, and starbucks per capita ratio were all but foreign to me. I found myself cruising the 15 to San Diego every single weekend and occasional week night to indulge in a ‘culture fix.’ Just like every community before, I resented my surroundings, always feeling like ‘If only I lived there.. my life would be perfect.

This has been an amazing year of growth since I arrived in California and I think I am content with my life for the first time. It wasn’t an overnight epiphany, but gradually I began to realize that your surroundings are what you make of them, and the good life is not your community proving it’s worth to you, but rather finding a way for you to add worth to your community, no matter where you are.

Once I made the commitment to ‘stay awhile’ I started seeing what this place has to offer, like some quality restaurants/wineries, photographic landscape, pristine weather, and cheap education! And what it lacks, like cool cultural events that the twentysomething community can enjoy, hopefully a few of us can band together to start making things happen.

I think I do have a gift for writing and an eye for photography, but like many of us out there, life and laziness has stalled any real progression in those areas in the last few years. Hopefully this blog will help me turn that around and will simultaneously connect me with others who share my same interests.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the future content!