“Now this is the story all about how my life got twisted upside down, and I’d like to take a minute just sit right there I’ll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-Air.” Well, let me rephrase, “Now this is the story all about how my life got twisted upside down, and I’d like to take a minute just sit right there I’ll tell you how I became a queen of a town called The Land.” Yeah, Queen is a bit much, but regardless. Cleveland, I’m back. And to be fair, I’ve been back for a year now. In fact, I wanted to recreate LeBron James’ Sports Illustrated “I’m Coming Home” cover.

As a native Clevelander, I was always in love with the city. Everyone dreams of living in New York City, I dreamed of living Downtown Cleveland. I moved to South Carolina where I completed High School, and eventually moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama where I lived for four years while attending (in my opinion) the BEST University in the country, The University of Alabama. (Roll Tide). I made it my goal after graduation to move Downtown Cleveland. It was all I wanted. I took a job that in hindsight was not a good fit for either of us but loved my apartment so I got a job at a popular restaurant and bar downtown. I was finally living in The Land, and was finally an adult and able to do so on my own. The only downside, a lot of my childhood friends were gone, or we had drifted apart. I had a couple of really good friends but essentially I was starting over. A blank slate after college was perfect. I could pick and choose who I wanted to be friends with and that felt amazing.

That’s what this is about. How I got to where I am today, with my amazing friend group. Of course I Tindered and Bumbled in my spare time…I mean who doesn’t! But there is another social media platform that changed my life for the better. Twitter.

Twitter is used for so many things. A lot of people even get their news from twitter. I however, used twitter in a very different way because I made a lot of my friends off the social media platform. When I lived down south, there was never a moment where I didn’t miss my real home in Cleveland and while Facebook was cool and all, there was something about Twitter that really kept me connected.

Twitter was just getting really big and easily the greatest addition to the twitterspehere was the @Indians Twitter. The Cleveland Indians are such a favorite regardless of whether or not you follow baseball every single day. Baseball is America’s Pastime and the Indians really emulate that. The Tribe joined twitter in July of 2009 and my life has never been the same.

Whether the teams were really good….or really bad… Indians twitter was always there. It was a way for me not only to keep up with Cleveland and the Indians, but it was a way for me to keep up with my friends that cared as much as I did about baseball. But the best part was that most of my friends now, are friends I’ve met from Indians Twitter.

And not just friends to go to Indians games with either, like real friends that we do other things with like go to festivals, have bonfires, go out downtown. Friends that encourage you when you have a bad day, encourage you to jump out of your comfort zone (like writing for The Odyssey!). #IndiansTwitter has been a part of some of my best memories of living Downtown.

This summer has clearly been the summer of Cleveland. The RNC was here in Cleveland (Can’t say I was a part of it though because I had the flu that whole week). And let’s not forget in addition to the First Place Cleveland Indians, the Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA Finals – breaking the 52 year championship drought in Cleveland. The night of Game 7 was the best night of my life. Downtown Cleveland was absolutely unreal.

I remember whenever I went somewhere and told someone I was from Cleveland I would always get those snide comments. Well, “The Mistake By The Lake” is no longer my friends. Now, Cleveland is the City of Champions, and my home is only getting bigger and better. Welcome aboard!