Warning: You might learn something from reading this blog.Â
I’m not making any promises, but I just can’t resist geeking-out about most things. I tend to simultaneously observe and learn from experiences, and the lessons from those observations are what you’ll find here. Consider this an exercise in learning from someone else’s mistakes. Plus, there’s a pretty good chance that you and I have a lot in common. Or maybe we just have one thing in common and you’ve visited this blog on a very specific mission. In any case, welcome to Being Bon Mot!
Being Bon Mot (name explained here…) is a blog about nearly every aspect of the things I love in life, but it centers on my parenting follies, my love of traveling with my family, and my life as a college professor. Being Bon Mot is an outlet for observations about the world around us. It’s more real life than life style. Mostly this blog will serve as an affirmation for that insatiable voice inside your head that searches for a greater understanding of mid-life adulting challenges and triumphs, solved one mommy hack at a time. It’s a quest for the silver lining in all things.
Who am I?
My name is Alicia Schortgen, and you can blame me for Being Bon Mot. I’m a 40-something mom who lives in Dallas, Texas with two kids, a great husband, a too-often messy house, and a full-time job. Actually, if you account for time and effort, being a mom is my full-time job. Being a college professor is my side hustle. Don’t worry – I’m well aware that I’m a blogging dinosaur. I also know how much time people like me spend searching for a representative voice in a sea of relative online youth. We Pinterest and Google and Facebook like teenagers even though we know better than to rely on social media for validation.
Interestingly enough, I do spend a lot of time around teenagers, but I’ve tried my best to stop acting like them. I teach nonprofit studies at Southern Methodist University, and I love that I get to introduce my students to ideas about charity that sometimes challenge their conventional notions of doing good in the community. So Being Bon Mot is also about my expertise in all things nonprofit – from vetting charitable organizations, to finding a place to volunteer, to rocking your time serving on the PTA. I explore the perils of college life with the benefit of hindsight and write about the real lessons we can all learn from time spent on campus.
I love to travel – by land and sea and air! You’ll see lots of posts about Disney travel and trips to Colorado because I’m mouse and mountain obsessed. I’ve planned no less than a hundred million Disney trips for friends for fun (bring me a latte and I’ll wake up early to snag FastPasses with you!), and those efforts served as one of the catalysts for starting this blog. I’ll go most anywhere anytime I can, and I live to experience new places through the eyes of my children. I’ve been known to drive cross-country for several weeks over summer break making frequent stops along the way; suffice it to say that I’m not afraid of road trips.
Mostly, I am a foil of myself. In other words, I constantly suffer from an identity crisis. I am both the protagonist and antagonist in the story of my life. I listen to NPR and love hip hop music. I read The Economist and People magazine weekly. I watch the Real Housewives and Sunday morning political shows with the same enthusiasm. I’m a college professor who appreciates a great pair of shoes. And I try to bring all of these perspectives into what I share here in a quasi-Shakespearian attempt to present the world as I see it.
Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
-Abigail Adams