A New Beginning...

Or "Do Not Trust to Hope, It Has Forsaken These Lands."

Goodness gracious me! It's been hard to believe that I've been away from this place for a good five months. As I mentioned a little while ago, I've been struggling with thoughts that I really haven't anything to write that anyone would want to read, or would not be expressed with much more skill elsewhere. I also got it into my head that writing would distract me from the essential task of looking for a job. This blog was originally conceived of as a way of keeping people in the know about the interesting work I was doing in Japan, and it sort of evolved into a spot for some amateur political commentary, mixed in with some posts that revealed my nerd status.

I've been thinking lately that I need an outlet for my thoughts, forget worrying if they're serious enough. So I think that I'm going to excise the poor attempts at applying my professional training and get more personal. I have a new spot for the more politically oriented stuff, but I'm sure the two will occasionally overlap.

Now maybe I'm all energised and ready to post again because I'm in a kind of manic stage, where the loss and mourning and crisis feel distant and I am once again confident in my abilities to elicit woos and yays from the people I interact with. 

I'll hedge and say that my posting will be intermittent. I'm on a motivation rollercoaster these days.

For the longest time I just been way unmotivated to put my fingers to the keyboard to hammer out anything but a cover letter. And believe me, some days I don't feel very much like typing those either. So it is slightly amusing that I'm coming back to my spot now, because it could be argued that I'm actually in a worse place than I was in March.

In March I had a gig, a modest evaluation of some peacebuilding training, and I was in a relationship. I now have neither. The loss of the latter has been pretty hard to take. I wasn't able to find a long(er)-term job in the States and had to leave. Not knowing when we'd ever be able to be in proximity again, a break-up was pretty much inevitable. Trés くやしい.

Yep. Since my return to mumsy's place I've been pretty miserable and pathetic some days.

Anyway, whichever of my vanity projects you peruse (both would be nice), I hope you'll find the content interesting and meaningful.