Taking Off the Training Wheels

What a crazy week! From a feverish day and night before I started teaching to almost losing my voice while teaching, I am sad to report that my health has been at its worst since January. The measles epidemic sweeping Japan has reached Fukuoka, which shouldn't affect my family, since we've all been vaccinated (even imoto, although hers may not kick in fully until next week), but since the strain here may be different than what onechan and I have been inoculated against, and since it is rampaging among the college-age population in Japan (most of whom never got vaccinated as children), I'm not going to be taking any chances. So that means more sleep and fewer late nights/early mornings. On top of that, I have four lectures to give in June and July, which is a lot for me, and I'm getting drawn deeper into the rhythm of the book manuscript's revision and addition process. Plus, the second week of June I'll be spending almost a week in the Tokyo/Chiba area with limited internet access and the week after that I'll be taking off a couple of days to meet up with friends visiting Japan in the Kyoto area. After that, I can foresee lots of meetings with students as they work on their final projects, grading, preparing my American classes, and getting ready to return to the States.

The upshot for CitizenSE is not that I'll be going on a leave or anything as drastic as that. But, from June through August, I will be ending the programming schedule that's sustained and structured my blogging here since December 2006. (Look for a new one in September, once I've figured out the rhythm of my semester back home.) For the next three months I won't be putting pressure on myself to maintain the 7 days/week schedule I've done a pretty decent job of sticking to, all things considered. And I won't be visiting my blogroll nearly as often as I've done this spring. I'll still be labelling posts that fit the old programming schedule's categories as appropriate, disregarding what day they happen to fall on. And I may be trying out some new labels/categories. But I'll be following a more organic flow from post to post, developing some ongoing series, and weaving the many loose ends I've left hanging for a while back into the mix.

Hope you like it!