shortest sabbatical ever.

Okay, I'm back. I know, I know, what's the point of saying I left if I'm going to come back in two days. Well, here's how it goes I was feeling overwhelmed by life, period. So I stopped the blog because it felt like a chore. But then today I went to the L.A. Times for a journalism club event and I met Tony Pierce, their online blog director, anyways, he was talking about how great blogs are and that a blog could be about anything: just write. Basically, he was saying if you want to write: write. It's a deceptively simple comment but it untied some of my writerly worries. From now on I'm going to write more freely on this blog. Trying to stay on topic has been really stultifying. My head is not as filled with fashion as I thought. I just want to write about random stuff, more of a what's on my mind kind of thing. So through this serendipitous meeting today I bring back the blog.

To start off the random blogs.....Here we go...

I've been itching to just pick up one of those books that you can't put down and just finish something. It had been awhile since I'd done just that. I made the mistake of trying to read Nietzche for fun. Don't get me wrong his stuff has been amusing. I didn't expect a nihilist to be so cuddly. He writes like an English professor with a beard would speak in a lecture, kind of conversational....sooooooo- not what I was expecting. Anyways, I've been working on that for a couple weeks and I've been working on an Anne Frank diary, IN JAPANESE, for months. It's elementary school level but not easy going for me. So I've been at a book impasse but this weekend I finished two books and in grand style, too. I finished each in a day! I feel soooo-- much better, like I cleaned my arteries and pumped in new blood.
I read Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut on Sunday and Entre Nous, A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl by Debra Ollivier on Monday. Vonnegut I knew would be good but the inner French woman book was surprisingly good, too. The French and Japanese have really similar tendencies and characteristics and it was interesting to read about how French women think and compare it with my experiences in Japan. Anyways, I am so glad to have finally finished some books.

Thank you for listening.