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Note #102: Spring crunch (2015.4.26)

It’s been a while since I last wrote here, but I have not been idle. I have been busy with work, of course, but I have also regularly set aside time for Liminality stuff. Specifically, I try to allow for at least a half hour in the evening that I devote to a “non-work-related project,” which can mean a number of things but usually means Liminality stuff. So why haven’t I posted anything? Well, what I’ve been working on for quite some time now is various journals from our travels over the past five years—China in 2011, Cambodia and the UK in 2013, New Zealand in 2014, Japan in 2014/15, and Europe (Croatia, Budapest, Prague, and Germany) in 2015. I’m going in chronological order and am currently almost done with the Japan journal. It is a bit ambitious, but I hope to be fully caught up before our trip this summer (which I suppose I will have to talk about at some point... but not now).

So while it may have been very quiet around here, I have in fact been working on content. If you’re wondering why none of it has seen the light of day yet, the reason is that I want to get all the first drafts done first before I start posting anything. Once all the first drafts are done, I can then go back and work on revising drafts, organizing and processing photos, and then rolling out the journals incrementally. This will mean a huge change for Liminality; currently, I only have one travel journal in the “writings” section (from Thailand in 2002), but once I roll out these journals I will have a lot more. In fact, this will be such a radical change to the character of content here that I am contemplating an accompanying change to the structure of Liminality. My thoughts on that are still nebulous, though, so I won’t say any more about that now. At the very least I can say that there will be a new format specially designed for the travel journals.

In other news, I think it is safe to say that spring is in full swing now here in Korea. Unfortunately, this has been the worst spring I can remember in terms of yellow dust and fine dust, and I have spent the last twenty springs in Korea. There have definitely been worse individual days, but in terms of the air quality being consistently horrible, I think this spring takes the cake (and coats it in a thick, choking layer of dust). Spring is never really awesome in Korea, thanks to the dust, but it can be bearable some years. Not this year. This year, I’m almost looking forward to the sweltering heat and humidity if it will mean a break from the dust. The heat may be miserable, but at least it doesn’t shorten my lifespan.

This Friday we have our preliminary examinations for student dissertations, which consist of public presentations of research, so I’ve been quite busy preparing for that. I have a ton of other things on my plate as well, which means that spare time is not something I have in abundance these days. In fact, I’m thinking that this crunch will probably last through the end of the semester in June, at which point I hope to have a little breathing room (and actual dust-free air to breathe). But I wanted to take this opportunity to at least post a quick note here, just to reassure those of you who don’t have any contact with me outside of Liminality that I am indeed still alive and kicking.

Oh, I also have some nice photos of cherry blossoms that I took a couple of weeks ago—maybe when the dissertation crunch is over I can post those. They were taken with a new lens and I think they came out really nice. So maybe sometime next week I’ll have that for you. Until then, here’s hoping that your days are dust- (and care-) free.

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