Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It has been three years since my last blog post…
Does anyone still have an RSS feed for this blog? Does anyone still drop by in the vain hope that I may start writing it again? I have no idea. But I’m back in any case, and this time, it’s for good! (*NB Not necessarily.)
Reason number one for being back is that finally, after a very long wait, some very long delays, and an inordinately long time, Charinko: 2,500 Kilometres Around Japan by Bicycle is at last due to be published fairly imminently. So obviously I need to try and drum up some interest and remind potential readers that I haven’t died or completely lost the ability to type and/or string a sentence together.
Reason number two is that, after three and a half years of dedicating the most vastestest proportion of the time that I don’t spend either sleeping, eating, exercising, hanging out with my family, or, er, gardening to being a freelance translator, I’ve realised that I need some creativity back in my life.
An ex-girlfriend of mine who worked as an Italian/English translator was once rather offended when I suggested (from a position of complete ignorance at the time) that translation wasn’t a “creative” job, and since becoming a translator myself, I still feel about 50% guilty for doing so. It’s true, some of my Japanese/English translating jobs do involve creativity to a greater or lesser extent, but a fair amount of them don’t. Not that I’m complaining, as non-creative translation is still interesting and a far more fulfilling and intellectually challenging job than being an English teacher, but I would like to increase the ratio of creativity – and particularly non-work-related creativity – in my life, even if it’s only in a small way.
Speaking of which, the idea this year is to keep my blog posts short-ish and sweet-ish, quite possibly with a large-ish dollop of photos to plump them up and fill them out at the same time. Much as I would like to write the kind of essay-length, in-depth stuff that I was churning out in earlier years, I haven’t (as I said) got the time, at least at the moment.
Which seems like a pretty good way to draw this possibly not long-awaited (if it really has been long-awaited, leave a comment and tell me so – I’ll be very pleased if you do) post to a graceful conclusion and attach a photo to it.
Last but not least and speaking of which again, I’m experimenting with a new and rather “busy” WordPress theme, which I’m hoping will act as an incentive to produce oodles of regular posts-with-pics. What this means for the moment is that most of the screen you’re now looking at is probably filled with content from three-plus years ago. Fear not, for this will (probably…) change!
Thank you for reading this and thank you for your ongoing support.
Sincerely &c.
Muzuhashi
Well, your are still in my RSS feed and I am glad to see the blog come back to life. And even better to hear about the book!
Hurrah, my reader is still out there! (And I suppose RSS feeds are bit like podcast “follows” – they don’t disappear unless you make a point of getting rid of them.)