A Long Time Coming

Every morning I wake up and say, "Today's Sam, you need to write a blog post today."

I always scrunch my eyes up and curse and continue, "you spent last year taking two trips to Japan, you're almost done with your second draft, you've developed a horrendous tea habit and even learned to drink it plain, what gives? You've had a real Christmas and even had a friend come visit you - look at how much you have to write about!"

Every night I go to bed and say, "God damn it. Tomorrow, then. Maybe tomorrow's Sam will be better."

And she never is.


I'm terrible at keeping things updated. I'm sitting on two emails I have to answer - relatively important ones - and it flies out of my head until I'm not in front of my computer anymore. I'm horrible at deadlines, at keeping things in order, at remembering I have to do things until after they need to be done.

And yesterday, I watched Dan drop a pile of new, empty boxes on the floor of his apartment. Boxes for us, for our things, because in 30 days my contract is over. In 30 days I go home.

Who would want to tackle this garbage? I don't.

I thought going to Korea was scary.

But now two years later it's just normal. I'm sitting in Starbucks writing a blog post because I'm procrastinating actually having to write anything. And in some ways, it's the normal that makes it hard to update the blog. To me, it's no longer exciting. The restaurants around us know our faces, give us free things, actually smile when we come in instead of looking bewildered. I'll be using Hangul to book bus tickets in about four hours to go up to Seoul and use the subway and find a hostel for what is now an unusual, frequent part of our lives. This is us. And who wants to hear about normal?

I thought going to Korea was scary.

But going home is terrifying. And I only have 30 days to get it together. 30 days to pack my Totoro pillow, my books, my shoes, while simultaneously planning three weeks in advance for what I'm going to need to bring to first Hong Kong, and then Europe. 30 days to finish this second draft and get it printed so I can edit during the 24 hours I'm about to spend on a plane at the end of February.

Next time I'll finally get around (a year late) to talking about my shrine trip in Tokyo!