I am a writer (and a Leo). Hear me roar.

"Please, keep writing," my grandfather said to me, his voice wavering with emotion and his eyes brimming with tears. He held me so tight against his body that I feared his 81-year-old body might crack from the pressure.

"I will. I promise," I said, feeling light-headed and confused that the nonsense I wrote on my blog could mean that much to anyone other than me.

That was four months ago. And until tonight, I hadn't written anything outside of work. I've written 100-page marketing plans, press releases, bylined articles and everything in-between. But the creative voice that is usually boiling up from inside of me has been silent and unmoving. I've written nothing for me.

My old blog -- which was a fun experiment and a creative outlet for awhile -- lapsed. I got lazy. I got busy. So, I didn't write. I didn't keep the promise to my grandfather and -- most importantly -- I didn't keep my promise to myself: to be a writer.

My whole life, I've been a writer. When I was six years old, I wrote stories about red-eyed people and mermaids that I tucked away in a lime-green pocket folder that had a picture of a koala on the front. When I was in middle school, my teacher "published" a 100-page novella I wrote about a family with 12 kids and put it in the school library (years later, my sister and her friends found it and declared they "loved" it). In high school, I continued to write short stories and was praised for my "college-level" explications of poems. In college, I wrote bad poetry when I was in love and had my pieces read aloud as examples in my creative writing classes. And throughout my 20's, I looked back on my life with one regret: that I wasn't a professional writer. Because I'd always felt that was my destiny.

But I continued to write for me. For fun. Until I stopped. And everyone -- including my grandfather -- asked me why.

So, when Jeremy asked me to start writing for this blog, I didn't miss a beat before answering "yes." And here I am.

I'm still not sure what I am supposed to be writing. I am unclear on the goals of this blog. But when you are a writer -- when prose and paragraphs and ideas fly through your brain at all times of the day -- and someone asks you to spill your guts and share your thoughts in a creative forum, you say "yes." So, here I am.

I promise to be entertaining, emotional, honest, snarky and fun. I promise to be real and let you get to know me. And I promise to write consistently.

Most importantly, I need to keep a simple promise I made four months ago: to just keep writing.