Kyoto: Arrival

With the advent of our second polar vortex of the winter (I still prefer this to 90+ days in August but will concede that it's arguably nicer when you can "go outside" and not "die"), I'm taking the nudge to finally start replaying my trip to Japan!

These travels spanned the end of 2018 and start of 2019, and I figure we may as well kick things off with another one o' these li'l video type deals I make for funzos. This one covers the sort of stagger-around-town-in-the-early-morning-light jetlag of my first 30 or so hours on the ground in Kyoto. You can watch it... on the internet??? (More than the post that follows, in which I attempt to use "words" to "communicate" things, this video gets a sense of how this wander felt, I think.)

After the jump: the first wave of Kyoto!

Gratitude: 2018 Edition

Back in my cozy and joyful pad in Chicago, I'm finally - after a frenetic week of work and a long weekend of unpacking, organizing, and decompressing - sifting through my photos and footage from Japan, and flipping through the journal I kept through the end of last year's travels. One stack of pages consists of a list that I'm reproducing below the jump.

I've started to make these lists every New Year's Eve, setting down things/events/people/memories that made the past year a good one. I started this at the end of 2016, without the notion of it being an annual thing, but I've been glad to have the opportunity to make it a ritual of sorts. I'm not much of one for resolutions, but I like reflective New Years Eves more than party-all-the-time ones, so this suits me perfectly and keeps my heart pointed in the right direction. It's a good reminder that a year is a long time, and even my worst years have been packed with joy and goodness. Getting to choose what to focus on, and opting for gratitude, is a good bit of training. Here's hoping, amidst the dark and the snow and the cold, that you're doing the same.

Here, then, for them as wants it, is my 2018 in fragments of happy, grateful memories. Jump to it!

It felt like a good omen to have the moon hanging over the clouds on the flight to Japan. (With breathless thanks to the flight attendant who made sure I opened my window to look and see.) And SPOILER ALERT it was a good omen, turns out Japan was good guess you can stop reading the blog forever now huh.

Annnnd we're back!

Hey cats n kittens.

It has been a little stretch here - a couple posts for the diehards who asked me what subdomain to look for when I shelved the blog to finish the dissertation - but as of this writing, I am successfully defended, and on the road again in Japan! It has been a wild year in some ways,and stodgily anti-wild in others. But as I prepare to return to the states next week, I am excited to see what a blank slate looks like for the first time in six years... to see what career paths unfold as I get to figure out what I am suited for... and to blather here about how Some Cultures Are Different Than Other Cultures Wow Who Knew, and Did You Know It Is Better To Travel Cheap. LUCKY EVERYBODY!!!

Anyhow, mostly I needed a space to drop my eventual Japan trip videos, but I am also fairly sure I'll be dropping some musey posts as I annoyingly tend to do. So stick around for THAT... and also for my future I guess???

Who knows what this blog will be! It's highly unlikely to be a travel blog per se, since my career options are not really digitally nomadic, which is fine because that sort of sounds like hell to me. But yeah - travel vids and reflections when they happen, oddball books-I-have-read posts, incisive commentary on uhhhh I dunno dairy production standards WHO KNOWS THE WORLD IS AN OYSTER THAT WE ARE LEASING UNTIL WE DIE.

Love you, kittens, good to be back, more soon...