About The Kitchen Sink: the blog celebrates a two months anniversary in October. I am getting to know a lot of you, my loyal readers. When I started this blog I was not sure where it will take me and what I was going to write about. So many subjects I wanted to discuss. A lot of questions I wanted to raise and search for answers. So I created The Kitchen Sink and decided it will be about:

– living a life filled with writing and blogging;

– exploring personal finance;

– trying to live a healthy life;

– traveling, researching, learning and reading.

Quite a wide blog niche you probably think. That’s exactly what I like about The Kitchen Sink. It breaks the rules of the blogging world, does not define a niche and does not limit me to one or two topics. It is a lifestyle blog that is scattered and full of unpredictable things. Just like our lives are.

About Aloysa: Aloysa is my blogger’s name. You know a male name Aloysius? Well, Aloysa is the same name; it’s just a female version of it that I came up with. I am an accountant by day and an aspiring writer and a blogger by night. I work in finance industry and deal all day long with numbers, budgets, debits, credits and journal entries. It is fun stuff but sometimes it gets to me. To get away from it all, I created this blog.

Before all of this happened, I was born and raised in the Soviet Republic of Lithuania (call it the Soviet Union) in a family of teachers. My grandmother taught Chemistry and Biology, my mother was a teacher of Russian Literature. My grandfather (a character worth at least a few blog posts) was a teacher of English and German languages. He should have taught me English but he never did. I guess, he never could imagine me moving to the US many years later.

Our life in the Soviet Union was not all that bad. Like in every culture and in every country, there were good things and bad things. In 1990, when I was close to graduating from the high school, the Soviet Union collapsed and The Soviet Republic of Lithuania became The Republic of Lithuania. It happened very fast: one night everyone went to sleep in the Soviet Union and woke up in the different country with a new government.

Everything was turned upside down. Russian language became a language of the enemy. Russian schools and Russian community struggled to survive in the new hostile world. About five years later, in 2000, I moved to the United States.

About the Yakezie: it is a personal finance and lifestyle blog network that was formed awhile ago. Their motto is “Selflessly Helping Others.” Sounds great to me! The group created the Yakezie Challenge (you can see their badge on my blog) for bloggers. The challenge requires the following:

– write quality content;

– post 2-4 times a week;

– selflessly promote others.

All of these are required in order to challenge and hopefully increase bloggers’ Alexa ranking. Before I stumbled onto the Yakezie I never even heard about Alexa. Apparently it is a very important ranking in the blogosphere. The lower your number (closer to #1), the better it is for your blog. I started my blog two months ago and my ranking is a whapping 2,693,805.

I joined the Yakezie Challenge yesterday. Let’s see where it takes me in six months.

Final word for my readers: I hope that my eye-opening and jaw dropping content will make you come back to The Kitchen Sink again and again. It is a potpourri of intellectualism, culture trends and out-of-the-box stories featuring smart and stimulating plots… Are you still with me? Good! I am joking! But I do hope you will come back, read, enjoy and subscribe. Without you, my readers, this blog would not exist.

You will find in The Kitchen Sink:

1. My book reviews;

2. Ramblings on life, writing and inspiration;

3. Interviews with great, empowering and talented people;

4. Personal finance discussions (I am an accountant after all);

5. Articles about health and fitness;

6. Guest posts that bring a new and fresh perspective.

I want to say a special Thank You to my most loyal and committed readers. Through The Kitchen Sink I met a lot of interesting, talented and inspiring people from all around the world. I hope to meet even more now as I joined the Yakezie Challenge.

You gotta love blogging for the opportunities it gives!

Thank you all for your support, encouraging and moving comments and kind feedback.

Please follow me on Twitter, or subscribe to this blog through email or RSS.