My name is Joey. It’s short for Josephine and it’s the name I gave myself when I was fifteen. I live in Honolulu, which is an exercise in not taking paradise for granted and something I am working actively on. I thought this blog might help that. I have long blonde hair, which isn’t my real hair color. I have cool blue eyes, and for the longest time I wore deep brown contacts because I thought it fit me better. It’s hard to wear a lot of makeup with blue eyes, it tend to just make your eyes look small and beady. Warm colors blend better. That should tell you something about me. I’m not always comfortable in my own skin. I want to be, but then I don’t think I would really be me anymore.

I write stories. Or I used to write stories, but I want to be a person who writes stories again. I believe in stories. It’s what separates us from anything else – our ability to give life structure and meaning. The stories we tell ourselves shape the way we live our lives.

I tell people I grew up on American television and that’s why I speak English so well. In reality, it did a lot more than just give me a second language. Before TV, I loved books before I could read and I loved TV way before I could speak English. The stories were always with me. They are our universal language.

If I list the stories that truly spoke to me we will find some common ground. Recognition that you and me are not so different after all. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was my first love. Buffy Summers was my mentor on how to be a teenage girl in 1997. I had just turned 13. I still drawn to that horrible late-90’s, early 00’s fashion with neon jackets, tweed skirts and unflattering spaghetti camisoles. I took Tae Kwon Do classes and I was the only girl who could do a triple kick in the club. Being a feminist became second nature due to the alignment of all my experiences up to then; being born in gender equality Norway, my mom’s quiet strength and her endless support for me to follow my dreams, and the story of a teenage girl who is chosen to protect the world from evil.

I followed my dreams and traveled to five continents. I found the kind of love in another person that I only believed possible in stories. I, more or less, accidentally got schooled and, in my thirst for knowledge of the world we live in, achieved a masters degree in sustainable development. I got to spend almost four years in sunny Honolulu with the love of my life. And now I’m at a cross road. In two months I have to leave to peruse this thing called ‘financial security’ or in my case, stop living off my parents. It’s incredibly hard to be separated from the life you love so I thought I would make these last two months count, to have something to show for.

I’m going to write my first story.