I have returned from my trip to western Japan (Ehime and Hiroshima prefectures).
Like m'colleague at Shisaku, I climbed a mountain — Ishizuchi, which at 1982m is not nearly as impressive as MTC's hike up Kitadake. (Apparently bloggers on holiday flee to mountains.)
In any case, returning to the blog after a week away is as good an opportunity as any to provide an update on the future of Observing Japan.
As some of you know, my life as a full-time freelance writer and blogger is coming to an end. From September, I will be reinstitutionalized into higher education, beginning my Ph.D. in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The life of a graduate student will not allow the kind of blogging I have done to this point. I am resigned to the fact that from September I will be unable to write as often or as much as I have to date. In the nearly two years that I have worked on this blog, I have found blogging to be an incredibly useful activity for gathering my thoughts, and, more recently, exploring ideas in a rough form before turning them into more polished articles. In short, I am reluctant to abandon it completely. I am entertaining ideas for making it into a group blog or moving my writing to a new site, but for now, I will keep Observing Japan, albeit with lower volume. The frequency of posts will likely drop to one or two a week at best.
I will continue blogging regularly during the remainder of my time in Japan (now just over a week) and throughout August, although I may find it hard to write as often as I move to Cambridge.
Thanks for your readership, your comments, your emails, and for bearing with me during this transition.
Like m'colleague at Shisaku, I climbed a mountain — Ishizuchi, which at 1982m is not nearly as impressive as MTC's hike up Kitadake. (Apparently bloggers on holiday flee to mountains.)
In any case, returning to the blog after a week away is as good an opportunity as any to provide an update on the future of Observing Japan.
As some of you know, my life as a full-time freelance writer and blogger is coming to an end. From September, I will be reinstitutionalized into higher education, beginning my Ph.D. in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The life of a graduate student will not allow the kind of blogging I have done to this point. I am resigned to the fact that from September I will be unable to write as often or as much as I have to date. In the nearly two years that I have worked on this blog, I have found blogging to be an incredibly useful activity for gathering my thoughts, and, more recently, exploring ideas in a rough form before turning them into more polished articles. In short, I am reluctant to abandon it completely. I am entertaining ideas for making it into a group blog or moving my writing to a new site, but for now, I will keep Observing Japan, albeit with lower volume. The frequency of posts will likely drop to one or two a week at best.
I will continue blogging regularly during the remainder of my time in Japan (now just over a week) and throughout August, although I may find it hard to write as often as I move to Cambridge.
Thanks for your readership, your comments, your emails, and for bearing with me during this transition.
4 comments:
This beginning series on blogging as an academic might be of interest.
For my part, I've found blogging to be a good safety valve; something to do that gets my mind off my research. It's probably a good idea to keep at it if at a lower volume.
Sorry to hear these news. Your blog helped me to graduate Japanese Science at University with A+, just to let you know. And I never stopped being interested / fascinated about Japan and it's politics through your help. I found your blog as the most professional and well-written in the net and I can only encourage you to keep up your good work, even if it is in another form or on another page or whatever. greetings from germany!
Ishizuchi is a fabulously dangerous mountain. I loved the trip I made there - especially having to borrow the vaccuum cleaner to suck all the bedbugs out of the piles of futons at the yamagoya/ryokan at which I was staying.
Good luck at MIT.
Post a Comment