Hello! My name is Debbie Goddard. I grew up in Philadelphia, lived in Buffalo, NY for twelve years, and now live in north-central New Jersey. I moved out of Philly to take an amazing job in the Outreach department at the Center for Inquiry, then came to NJ for another incredible opportunity at American Atheists—two very fulfilling roles that have kept me busy!
When I have time for hobbies, I like to hike, read, play guitar, play volleyball, bake fun desserts, and draw superheroes, especially ones from Marvel comics—well, I usually just copy panels from pages of comics I like as drawing practice.
As I created this About page, I asked myself some questions, like: Why is this here? What am I doing? Do I really think I have time to blog, when I’m not even blogging where I’m supposed to be blogging?
Well, this is here for a few reasons. First, not everything I might want to write about would be suitable for other outlets I could be contributing to. I might talk about hiking, musicals, food, movies, sex and gender, or other subjects. I don’t write enough for myself yet to know what I might want to write about.
Second, in case it’s not already obvious, I don’t write enough. Blogging formally on a platform that gets some traffic is a little nervousifying. It makes me make up words and worry that I’m going to be judged by the often-very-intelligent readership. So this blog can function as a sandbox, my practice space, to create posts that don’t take me hours to edit into something that’s less likely to be criticized by people I respect and admire. (That’s the hope, at least.)
Third, I didn’t know a lot about how websites work, so I wanted to create one. There are words like “nameservers” and “DNS” being bandied about that I didn’t understand. I also registered a few domains years ago but hadn’t done anything with them. What better way to learn how the backend works than to make a website or three?
Fourth, I thought a blog that wasn’t related to my work life might be a fun place to share things with friends. And if only two people ever look at it, even better.
Excelsior!
If you’re looking for my personal site, please go to debbiegoddard.com.