Reclaiming an Abandoned Comfort

Hello, my name is Luanna, and this is my new blog!

What do you mean, “new”? Well… the title of this post isn’t random. For a long time now, I’ve been trying to bring back a time when everything seemed simpler. I think the last post I wrote on my old blog was sometime back in 2017, right after a trip to Toronto that completely changed my life. At the time, I had no idea just how much that decision to create a little “silly” website would actually be the first step toward that change.

Lua de Outubro (October Moon) is one of the most vivid memories I have from my teenage years. I was around 16 when I created it, following an idea from a friend I met on the late, great Orkut (yes, it’s been that long)… The goal? To talk about photography. But we didn’t stick to just one topic. The more I discovered the world of blogging, the more things I wanted to talk about.

Through the blog, I discovered who I wanted to be, what I was passionate about, possible career paths, and, I dare say, a lot about the world itself. As a very introverted person, I had always struggled to make friends, leave the house, or have a life that felt less lonely, but LDO changed that. I met other bloggers from my city who let me do photoshoots with/of them. We created projects that gave purpose to my weeks, to my life, and everything became… more fun!

But life happens; the blogging world started to fade, everyone moved to YouTube, and to this day I still don’t have enough confidence to make videos. After all, I discovered my love for writing, and I’m the kind of person who doesn’t handle change well. Yes, it’s a little ironic to say that when the blog itself disappeared because I decided to move to another country, alone, without speaking English fluently. Soon, immigrant life, full-time film school, a pandemic, and so many other things slowly took over the space the blog used to occupy, and keeping everything under control became impossible.

I want to save the details of all that for another post, though. More than ten years later, “Lua de Outubro” no longer felt like the right name. Still, I really wanted to revisit some of my old posts and bring them over here. Despite everything, I’ve changed, but not completely. A decade is an incredibly long time, and now, with thirty just around the corner, I believe I’ve lived enough to have become a different person, even if the essence remains.

And so, today, you meet Dear Beeary: a mix of “dear diary” and “honeybee,” a nickname given to me by someone who was part of my life during those years away and who no longer is. But no, this blog isn’t dedicated to that person in any way. I’m simply trying to build, once again, a place where I enjoy being. I want to share everything I love, what it’s like to live so far from home, random thoughts and stories, and, most importantly, try to reclaim my love for photography and writing - the things that allowed me to start all of this in the first place. I don’t know exactly what this space will become. Maybe a diary, maybe a photo album, maybe a place to keep memories safe before they disappear. But I’m certain that this is where I’m meant to be.

So: Here’s to new beginnings, and welcome to Dear Beeary.

I hope you find a little sweetness here.

Read more about this in my Substack reflection On starting over.