10 days and 2400 kilometers later

I'm back. Actually I've been back for a full week now, but even a week after the long break I still can't get adjusted to classes and teaching.

Blogging about the Kyushuu trip, plus other backlogged stories and photos I've been meaning to write about since way back in late Februrary (Hadaka Matsuri in Okayama, grand sumo tournament in Osaka, school trip to Matsue, the end of the adult class, the beginning of the kiddie class, etc.) just seem like such a chore.

This is of course, stupid. Writing about nonsense is meant for fun and release from the tribulation of the daily grind. It should never, in any way, feel like a burden on my free time.

So why does it?

Is it because of my self-imposed duty to record my life? Or my imagined loyalty to my paltry readership? Or simply because I have less time now than a few months ago to mentally masturbate?

At times, I feel like I'm living for blog-worthy anecdotes. It's like whatever noteworthy episodes happenning in my life do not reach their closure until they have been dutifully documented by me. Has the blog been living my life rather than the other way around? Looking back, I filled most of April archive with nonsense, just so I can keep it "regular."

This way of living is exactly the opposite of the Zen ideal of living in the present: as something interesting is happening to me at the moment, I am thinking about how to write about it in my future blog entry and what to write about that last interesting thing in my current blog entry.

Fuck it. I'll write about those when I feel like it down the road. It's time to get back into the present swing of things.