My name is Maria Q. Stultz. I was born in Colombia many moons ago. That’s where I grew up, went to college, and got my first job as an Industrial Engineer. I am known as “Mafe” there.
Trying to escape from the job and other favorite things, I went to a top business school in the U.S. Got my MBA degree and a great job as a financial analyst in Dallas, so I moved to Texas, where I started dating a very cute and interesting gringo. A few years later, after many esoteric signs of celestial approval, I married my adorable quesito.
I enjoyed my career for several years, but at some point I realized that I was headed in the wrong direction. I was a loved senior analyst, and people wanted to promote me, but I didn’t want any of those jobs. My heart wasn’t there… So after some intensive soul-searching, I did the inconceivable and left my business job to begin training on a field that allowed me to CREATE tangible products; a field that combined my artistic inclination with my undeniably analytical ISTJ mind… And so, I became a Web Designer.
While I always thought that I would eventually have children, it took me a long time to actually make the decision to try for a baby. This site was an interesting outlet for me to document and discuss that process with friends (i.e. the doubts, the decision, the wait). And then, I got pregnant. And then, the baby came. And somehow, without any previous planning, I became a stay at home mom.
There are women who define motherhood as their reason of being. I’m not one of them. I love my little boy to death and can’t imagine my life without him, but I am not the person who ceased to exist as an individual since she became a mother. If anything, the forced break from work awakened one of my oldest passions: sewing, crafting, handmaking. And at this point of my life, after having switched careers once, all I can think about is how I can turn “this” [thing I love doing more than anything else in the world] into my next job. I did it once. Why not try it again?
This site began somewhere around late March, 2006 as a personal experiment. My main purpose was to use it as a playground to help me keep the creative juices flowing. Almost three years later, I can say that it has given me so much more than that. While my new occupation as a mom and artisan often takes me away from writing, this blog keeps documenting and sharing the person that I am today. We live away from both of our families and all of our friends, and I am extremely grateful for any kind of human response I get through this site.
Sentimental Site Trivia
Birth: March 16, 2006. (A Pisces with ascendant in Sagittarius)
First comment: April 11, 2006, by Lorelle VanFossen on “Sticking my patita in the blogosphere”
Claimed in Technorati: April 21, 2006. Initial rank: 1,178,156
First feed subscriber: Chris and Petie DiPaolo on May 5, 2006
First blogroll link from an unrelated blogger: Mandarine on Oct 12, 2006
First coment from a personally admired celebrity: Feb 23, 2007. Internationally acclaimed tenor, Jerome Pruett, thanks me for my complimentary comments on “The Music Teacher”
First blushing praise email from a stranger: Mar 3, 2007 by Tracey
First client request driven by this site and not my business portfolio: Jul 23, 2007, by a gentleman who I hope will write a certain great story some day
First comment from my mom: Aug 12, 2007 on “One”
First two minutes of fame: On Feb 22, 2008 Apartment Therapy’s Ohdeedoh features my baby’s nursery mural and the tutorial I wrote on how I painted it. Five months later, Cookie magazine does the same on its nesting blog