I'm back!

Hey guys! I'm back from Tokyo. The meetings went surprisingly well, for meetings in Japanese with 3 governmental ministries and 1 governmental division. They were not at all boring, and somehow listening to days of Japanese did not give me a headache. Maybe I'm actually getting good at this!

Today's post is neither here nor there, in keeping with the state of my brain today :)

-- I've taken the day off work (I didn't actually have any classes today because that school has all-day sports practice, and I have a full slate tomorrow at another school. ugh :( ). By some strange twist of evil fate, half the reason I took today off is to finish all the work I didn't do because I was working on Saturday and Sunday. What a tangled web we weave when we have 3 employers. My official jobn is to teach English in 4 schools, and that's the only job that pays yet. But representing the JET participants (people on my program) in the 4 Northernmost prefectures is definitely a job. And writing (seriously), as mush as I love it, is also a job.

-- I've been reading pretty widely lately. Sorta. lol. I'm trying to figure out where I want my niche to be. I mean, I can write a few different genre in a few different voices right now. I know I won't end up in historical, and I probably won't end up in fantasy (no patience for that amount of detail). But I'm flipflopping about how heavy I want my style and my topics to be. You guys probably know by now, I can be pretty heavy sometimes. But on occasion I can be light and frivolous. (This is kinda the reverse of the real me, I'm often frivolous and people say I'm "the happiest person they know" but I'm not very serious unless I need to be.)

Don't get me wrong, I have no intentions of copying anyone else's style- why would I want to be a second rate J.K. Rowling, when I can be a first rate Claire Dawn?- but I've been exploring to see what feels I like. More backstory or less? More flashbacks or less? More description or less? etc, etc.

-- We're having a cold snap. We've been around 5 Celcius for a few days (that's 40's Farenheit), but we're supposed to get back up to around 20 (70) in a few days. Iwate winter just won't give up.

-- I've been looking a little more at colleges again. This time my eye's on Queen's College, CUNY. Reasonable tuition and a program I swear was made with me in mind. MFA Creative Writing and Literary Translation, with an option for a certificate in ESL (teaching English as a Second Language). If you could marry a college program...

-- The recent meeting with all the gov't officials remind how much I love all that stuff too. I'm an oxymoron of a creature. I hate politics and accounts, but I love policy meetings and business. Go figure.

Anyhoo's that's enough randomness for today. I'm off to catch up on the blogosphere and catch up on the work I'm supposed to be doing.