#GayFoodieColumn

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I'D realized a couple of weeks ago that the hashtag #gayfoodiecolumn had not (yet) been claimed on Instagram; I now unofficially own it and have been adding it to all of my postings of "THE DISH" (#THEDISH) on my Instagram profile. 

Oh yes... that's what's been taking up so much of my time over the past several months (THE DISH, not Instagram).

SINCE about November of last year, I've been writing a regular dining column aptly titled "THE DISH" for a bi-weekly, free listings magazine which is available throughout NYC and even extending unto Long Island and New Jersey. With 35,000 metro-ites reading my column every two weeks, my dream of making it as a (print) writer has well-nigh come true! But perhaps the most interesting thing that's happened through all of this is seeing how much one's writing can change when targeting a specific audience (and topic)--as well as trying to maintain consistency of product (think "non-vintage," all you wine nerds out there). There's a lot more people you need to please writing for a magazine, than you do writing for your own blog!

I've also learned quite a bit about the mechanics of publishing, as well as learning a great deal of patience (it can sometimes take three additional pages of content to add just one additional page in a magazine)! I will probably never forget the time when I'd submitted my second column to the magazine via e-mail--and it didn't appear in the following issue!--how I'd canceled all of my plans that evening because I was devastated thinking that the magazine had changed their minds about having me write for them! Needless to say, that was not the case and my article ran in an issue two weeks later.

Yet, I have been neglecting my blogging duties. But I am always on the lookout for new and worthy blogging material! My problem, however, is that I'm a bit of a creature of habit and once I've become fond of a particular bar/restaurant/bottle of wine... it can be rather hard to tear me away. And a blog all about brut bubbly and 2013 Provence rosés would probably not be the most interesting read. Unless that is what you want. Do you? 

Nah! Just invite me somewhere great that I haven't been to before... and now that I'm a real writer, the tab's on you! #sassygay