Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Don't Call It A Comeback
I know I already tweeted this, but I just finished Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death today after nearly three days of reading. It's a pretty short book, and I thought I'd blow through it inside of an afternoon. Yet the book was so deep in content I kept stopping to think about what he was trying to say and how it applied to my own personal habits.
Oh wait, I should probably explain what the hell a "tweet" is. Let me digress for a moment.
With no classes or real responsibilities of any kind at work these days, I have but two choices to reasonably pass the time while I sit around the office all day: I can read, or I can write. The former is more appealing because it excites me and lets me think about new ideas, whether I read fiction or non-fiction. The latter is much harder work for me, but ultimately it is more constructive and I feel better having done it. And like reading, what kind of writing I manage is immaterial, because the mere act of writing is very important to me. That belief was a major motivator for me to start writing this blog in the first place, and my total lack of commitment to that ideal (and this blog) in recent times is one of my biggest regrets. Sure, I've been busy graduating from college, finding a job, moving to a foreign country and getting married, but all of that activity should have been fuel to write even more about my life. The past eighteen months should have inspired hundreds of (blog-)pages of material. Instead, I wrote less during this time than I did during the nine months I was an exchange student. Much, much less.
While I cannot undo the laziness that derailed my blog (no matter how many times I press ctrl-Z) I can take the necessary steps to get back on track, and that means writing. Writing, writing, writing. Pictures are nice, videos are fun, but the more I write the better my writing will become. Am I writing merely for writing's sake? Not exactly. My current job, the one that allows me to live in Japan and enjoy myself, has a finite length. At some point in the next few years, I must look for a new job. This is not like those days back in the postal service when I kept telling myself I "needed" a better job. That was a want, not a need. The postal service was all too happy to leech away my life indefinitely. Here in Japan, when my JET-tenure ends, I will have to decide what kind of job I want to have. It has become apparent to me that if I seriously want to find a job that doesn't require "teaching" English to uninterested Japanese schoolchildren, which I strongly suspect will be the case, then I will need to find a job that requires me to write. A lot. Let's face it: I'm not much of a laborer and my mythical entry into show business is incredibly unlikely to materialize. My best non-teaching prospect in Japan is translation, which means I will have to be a good writer.
In a kind of chicken-and-the-egg situation, I've also begun to look critically at the design of feitclub.com in an attempt to make it look, you know, halfway decent. This whole thing started with a pre-designed Blogger template that I used and then modified many times over to suit my needs. At this point, the site is a mess of mixed colors, out-of-date links, and general sloppiness. So while I take more of my time to write and improve the content of the site, I'm going to do my best to improve the look and functionality of the site as well. While I can't do too much of that at work (as all computers in the school district block blogger.com and anything else resembling a blog) I should have enough time to myself this summer to make major headway on both fronts.
One small step towards all this has been my foray into Twitter. Put simply, Twitter is a "micro-blogging" tool where each post is short and sweet. Most of my messages (a.k.a. "tweets") will be less than 120 characters, typically submitted via my mobile phone. That may sound like a waste of time, but I've quickly learned that typing little messages about my day is fun to do. Hopefully, it will prove to be fun to read. At this time, the latest posts from Twitter are wedged in the sidebar. In the future, I hope to find a way to integrate them with the rest of my updates, providing a comprehensive look at the non-stop excitement I am experiencing everyday.
Wait...wasn't my last post all about a fucking wasp?
Oh wait, I should probably explain what the hell a "tweet" is. Let me digress for a moment.
With no classes or real responsibilities of any kind at work these days, I have but two choices to reasonably pass the time while I sit around the office all day: I can read, or I can write. The former is more appealing because it excites me and lets me think about new ideas, whether I read fiction or non-fiction. The latter is much harder work for me, but ultimately it is more constructive and I feel better having done it. And like reading, what kind of writing I manage is immaterial, because the mere act of writing is very important to me. That belief was a major motivator for me to start writing this blog in the first place, and my total lack of commitment to that ideal (and this blog) in recent times is one of my biggest regrets. Sure, I've been busy graduating from college, finding a job, moving to a foreign country and getting married, but all of that activity should have been fuel to write even more about my life. The past eighteen months should have inspired hundreds of (blog-)pages of material. Instead, I wrote less during this time than I did during the nine months I was an exchange student. Much, much less.
While I cannot undo the laziness that derailed my blog (no matter how many times I press ctrl-Z) I can take the necessary steps to get back on track, and that means writing. Writing, writing, writing. Pictures are nice, videos are fun, but the more I write the better my writing will become. Am I writing merely for writing's sake? Not exactly. My current job, the one that allows me to live in Japan and enjoy myself, has a finite length. At some point in the next few years, I must look for a new job. This is not like those days back in the postal service when I kept telling myself I "needed" a better job. That was a want, not a need. The postal service was all too happy to leech away my life indefinitely. Here in Japan, when my JET-tenure ends, I will have to decide what kind of job I want to have. It has become apparent to me that if I seriously want to find a job that doesn't require "teaching" English to uninterested Japanese schoolchildren, which I strongly suspect will be the case, then I will need to find a job that requires me to write. A lot. Let's face it: I'm not much of a laborer and my mythical entry into show business is incredibly unlikely to materialize. My best non-teaching prospect in Japan is translation, which means I will have to be a good writer.
In a kind of chicken-and-the-egg situation, I've also begun to look critically at the design of feitclub.com in an attempt to make it look, you know, halfway decent. This whole thing started with a pre-designed Blogger template that I used and then modified many times over to suit my needs. At this point, the site is a mess of mixed colors, out-of-date links, and general sloppiness. So while I take more of my time to write and improve the content of the site, I'm going to do my best to improve the look and functionality of the site as well. While I can't do too much of that at work (as all computers in the school district block blogger.com and anything else resembling a blog) I should have enough time to myself this summer to make major headway on both fronts.
One small step towards all this has been my foray into Twitter. Put simply, Twitter is a "micro-blogging" tool where each post is short and sweet. Most of my messages (a.k.a. "tweets") will be less than 120 characters, typically submitted via my mobile phone. That may sound like a waste of time, but I've quickly learned that typing little messages about my day is fun to do. Hopefully, it will prove to be fun to read. At this time, the latest posts from Twitter are wedged in the sidebar. In the future, I hope to find a way to integrate them with the rest of my updates, providing a comprehensive look at the non-stop excitement I am experiencing everyday.
Wait...wasn't my last post all about a fucking wasp?
Feedback:
コメントがあります？ Type something, please. It's less work for me.
When leaving comments, please don't remain Anonymous. Click on "Other" and pick a name!
Be sociable! No sign-up is required!
When leaving comments, please don't remain Anonymous. Click on "Other" and pick a name!
Be sociable! No sign-up is required!
unpaid advertising...I'm no sell out!
