mattschiavenza.com

Back in 2001, when I had just begun my year abroad in Italy, I sat down at an internet cafe each week and composed lengthy e-mails to a few dozen of my friends from college and high school. The e-mails began as fairly anodyne summaries of my experiences in the country, but after awhile I decided to liven them up with commentary, humor, analysis, and other things that happened to be on my mind those days. Though I didn’t know it at the time, I had begun “blogging”; and in a real way I haven’t stopped since.

When I moved to China three years later, I intended to reprise this pleasant tradition but felt that group e-mails were tedious to write and inefficient. Fortunately, technology had caught up by then and I was able to launch my first “proper’” blog, ambitiously entitled No Borders No Limits. Nearly 1,500 entries and one name-change later, this blog has survived to the present day. What began as a hobby has become an indelible part of my identity. Even with Facebook, Twitter, and other diversions readily available, I couldn’t imagine not having a blog.

This site has evolved into a collection of my more formalized thoughts, though a bit of ephemera sneaks in now and then. For a glimpse into the minutiae that grasps my attention each day, please visit Miscellaneous Marginalia, a micro-blog covering all things not China.