Every so often, I’ll be using “A Personal Note” to denote entries where I just talk about my life.  I don’t intend to ramble on (the hit tracker on my control page reminds me every day that I write in a public space).  But once in a while I feel the need to situate myself.

So, for the record, I don’t actually teach in Japan yet.  I fly out to Tokyo for teacher training this weekend, and my assignment in Tottori begins the following week.   At the moment, I’m packing and letting my mind wander:  A couple of days ago, a friend of mine mentioned a magazine article about the lack of artifacts in contemporary life.   With the increasing digitization of everything we do, the argument goes that there’s a perilous dearth of tangible objects to leave for future generations.  There’s no physical evidence of who we were and what we did.

On one hand, I think I’m part of the problem.   For my long stay in Japan, I’m taking clothes, toiletries, and my precious, precious laptop.  I’ll get some furnishing when I’m there, so I don’t feel like I need anything else to get by.  But on the other hand, I’m leaving in my family’s care a lot of things that I didn’t realize I had:  Birthday cards.  My wisdom teeth.  The corsage that I wore to prom.  Virtually every pair of glasses that I’ve ever owned.  These are not things that I want destroyed.

For all that I enjoy the notion of a digital zen lifestyle, it turns out I’m not so simple after all.  I have real, physical objects anchoring me in time and space.  I suppose at least I have incentive to come back.

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Anyway, I expect to be inactive for about a week as I get settled in.  Apologies.  But I’ll be back tout-suite.