The Backlog : or, A Series of Events I Neglected to Tell You About

What are you doing?

Oh. That.

Hey. That's cool. I bet a lot of people take pictures of that.

Digital tourism and the suspended decay of memory-based experience.

There's really so much - so very, very much - to say. There are weeks and weeks of neglected moments and memories that will never get out of my head for one blog.

Wouldn't you rather hear about these things in person?

I suppose for posterity's sake I should attempt to record what I do here. Why I wait until late, late at night to do these things is beyond me. I fib and tell myself that it's because I'm busy, or that I'm trying to adjust my internal clock to Toronto time in anticipation of returning home, or that I'm simply an irreconcilable nighthawk, so I should just deal with it.

None of these are completely factual, however, and the truth is that I am the most irrationally fearful person who ever considered writing publicly. Looking back on all the fun I've had in Japan, I realize that at times I've acted as though my life here was temporally exclusive or private beyond consequence. I've tried not to hurt anyone along the way. It's hard to go a full two years without stubbing your toe on another person's existence. I'd like to think that all I've accomplished here in Japan is noteworthy beyond the scope of what a blog can help me express. But that's just another excuse I trick myself into believing.

I used to write papers in school. I would write drastic, frantic, last-minute papers that occasionally scored me a mediocre mark but rarely truly rewarded me with one. I was so entirely worried about my self-indulgent faux-eloquence collapsing under the strain of honesty that I became a written invention. Everything I was obliged to do was a makeshift presentation because, like in everything I've ever written, I'm deeply terrified of honesty. My explanation for this is two-fold, though you might argue that one reason is an incarnation of the other.

First, in being afraid to be honest with myself I limit my ability to express myself. I can always tell myself later that I hadn't really tried and that is why I failed. If I wrote a researched, thought-out and organized piece and subsequently discovered a resulting mediocrity - despite my actual best efforts - I am then destined to that judgement of myself. At times I underachieve to avoid having to discover myself as sub-par. I fail to commit to an effort and never taste its realization. Incidentally, this is also why I think I know a little bit about a lot of things as opposed to knowing a whole lot about some important specifics. I'm also very modestly proficient in a lot of different areas but don't particularly shine at most things the way a committed effort would allow me to. A fear of commitment is, at least partly, a fear of failure. Somehow, this attitude maintains a protective shield between me and what I am actually capable of, but eventually you get tired of thinking about what you might be.

Secondly, writing in verbal tapestries and pedantic whims or in sprawling gusts of masked meaning, I maintain a degree of privacy. How elusive. I know that no one is expecting me to be completely open in the writing I do on my blog. And no one really wants a play-by-play of the events that make up my everyday. You all have your own important and worrisome lives to lead. But I'm rarely to the point about anything here unless I know I'll be safe from everyone who might read it. The illusion of privacy keeps me sane in Japan; I imagine that if no one else tends to stand out then neither will I, despite my visible differences as a minority. In coveting that somewhat-transparent privacy I prevent myself from honestly expressing myself, whether it be here for the digital archives or in my day-to-day interaction. As though if I didn't post it on my blog no one will know that it happened. In a sense that's true for you fantastic folks from home who have a very limited and narrow window with which to see into my life here. But that attitude discounts the very real life that I'm living with the people I know here in Himeji.

I know most of you who are reading this. I've met you face-to-face at one time or another, and you have at least a fleeting desire to know what I'm like outside of the person you met on the street or the train or the bar or on the job.

I'm not dedicated enough to this blog. I never wanted it to be play-by-play. But the lack of updates that this receives stems from the lack of honesty I ever give out. I'm not quite comfortable enough to explode across the public space I've created so I let the photographs and the videos and the newspaper articles entertain those of you who have a web-based interest in what goes on in my head. Trust me: I owe you a lot more than you ever receive from me.

Perhaps - but no promises - I'll try to make December the month where I tell you an anecdote once a day. I've accumulated a lot of experience here in Japan, and this leg of my life adventure is coming quickly to a close. There's less than two months before I am in the nation of Singapore to being the Asian journey of a lifetime, but I'm managing to squeeze in a two-and-a-half week stretch in Canada for the Christmas holidays. I'd love to see as many of you as possible, so drop me a line now. I'll do my best to set things up as well, but you know how I hate group emails. I'm not trying to surprise anyone this time around so make sure you just drop by.

Home: December 18th - January 3rd.
Japan: January 3rd - January 27th.
Southeast Asia and Life: January 27th onward.