About

Do you ever find yourself stopping all thought of anything else aside from one thing? Tried to shut out the noise and hustle and bustle of life and concentrate on just one thing?

I have.

I knew that I wanted to start writing a blog at some point, but the same questions and worries always kept me from actually sitting down to my computer and doing it. The questions of what to write about, and who my audience would be, and the always-plaguing doubting question: why should I write?

The title of this blog was also quite daunting, as I didn’t want to mimic others’ ideas, but I also knew I did not want to be either too specific or too broad. I did my research on how other bloggers got started, and watched how-to videos, read countless blog entries, and even Googled “Blog Name Generator”. It had me fill in text boxes of my name and topics I thought of writing about, and from there, it would “magically” figure out what my blog’s name would be. It felt almost silly.

Immediately after going through all of that process, I thought about my own name. Margaret. For as long as I can remember, I preferred going by my formal name over any assumed nickname. Granted, my family and closer friends have and will always know me by something else, but whenever the time came for names to be called (like for attendance at school), I opted to keep things simple.

Before I was born, my family had already started to grow. My parents had welcomed their firstborn, a daughter Katherine in September of 1986. They had decided to be surprised and wait to find out the sex until the birth. In doing so, they made lists of classic, traditional names for both boys and girls (if I remember correctly, Andrew was the top pick for a boy). On his own golden birthday, my dad became a father, a husband and wife became parents and Katie was born.

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that when my parents got pregnant again, a similar path was followed. However, what was different in the process of naming me was that Margaret was a name that not only had classic ties to the British monarchy (both my parents are history buffs), but the name had also been passed down through generations on both sides of the family tree.

The name Margaret is of Persian origin, and means “pearl”. As science whizzes and jewelers both know, pearls are formed when small irritants (usually a parasite) work their way into the shell of clams, oysters or mussels. To protect itself, the shellfish releases a fluid coating called nacre to cover the irritant completely. That’s a lot of science talk for basically saying that sometimes, a microscopically small thing can grow with time into something beautiful, powerful, classic, elegant and versatile.

Through this thought process of my own name, of the how, the why, and the origins of the where, a spark ignited. I am not someone who is drawn to the overcomplicated, the overdone, and the overused. I tend to find joy in the smaller, the calmer, and the simpler.

The Simpler. There is beauty in simplicity. There is grace, there is dignity, and there is creativity in the simplistic. As an aspiring photographer, designer, and creative, I will be posting my own pictures of anything from food, flowers, art, architecture, and nature and write about why they inspire me.

So begins my blog and my journey, as Simply Margaret. I doubt a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Thank you for joining me on this adventure. I can’t wait to see what it has in store!