After a one-month hiatus, we are back Enroute!
We have been sick-sick-sick, which first made us slack-slack-SLACK and then, as we kept catching one disease after another, gradually worked up to a horrible sort of deep fatigue and existential misery, where, while both of us had enough energy to plod through our jobs, neither of us really felt that life was ever going to be worth living again.
Of course, we were ALSO doing this against a backdrop of Christmas and festival-based activities, which meant that we were constantly hauled out into the cold to do wonderful, sleep depriving things while we just wanted a quiet lie-down, so we felt like the only sniffly miserables in Japan. Well… most of it was still really great. But it still would have been nicer if we’d been healthy!
In the exhausting leadup to Christmas however, both of us began to notice small stirrings of something approaching an actual zest for life. Not massive, and never for very long, but it was definitely there. Then, after a glorious sleep-in on Christmas day, and a bit of time to spend together, it happened: We got our genki back!
And now, there’s no stopping us! Clear chested, strong limbed, and breathing through our noses, we are ready to face the world again!
Actually, that’s not altogether true; while Gem is here, cheerfully typing in first person plural, Kin is dying yet another death of a thousand cuts (all of them apparently to his tonsils). But he was healthy yesterday, damn it, and anyway, the winter holiday is finally here, so he’s tucked up under the kotatsu with a hot latte and a ten kilo box of mandarins (which is about all he asks out of life most of the time). It should take no time at all for him to feel better.
This gap period has been good though, as (prior to Kin’s relapse) we’ve been able to take a bit of distance from the blog and make some decisions about where we want to go with it. From a place for Gem to whine about her lunch, it started to develop into more of a journal and a then into a public way to hold ourselves accountable for plans we’ve made and actions we’ve taken (if you know you’re going to tell the internet about an argument with your spouse, for example, you tend to argue that little bit more reasonably!)
So we’ve made a few decisions about where we want to take ourselves and that means that some changes are going to be happen, possibly structural, definitely cosmetic and with a few content-fixes as well. That means things are going to disappear and reappear around here for the next month or so, while we get ourselves organised.
Some of the changes will be:
– Kyuushockers moving to a blog of their own. While we’re grateful to the kyuushoku followers for getting us to post on anything like a regular basis, just looking at that long roll of horrible lunches in the middle of the lovely memories we plan to treasure is frankly depressing. Sad to say, 98% of the traffic will probably go when the Kyuushockers do, but for semi-enthusiasts, regular updates will still be posted on Facebook. To those who were just here for the food (HA!) it was lovely having you, and Gem will see you at Kyuushockers!
– A new (but not very different) domain name. The Christmas gift of the domain “enroutetoawesome.com” (a not-so-gentle nudge from Shallow to get our arses back in gear) has allowed us to pretend we have our own little corner of the internet to figure this blogging thing out. Now we just have to work on getting the shagger to link up properly with Facebook.
– Re-writes, re-vamps, re-designs and a general wash and brush up to all areas of the site, with a slightly more sane approach to content. Up until now, both of us have just been flinging up whatever takes our fancy, whenever we feel like it’s been a while. Now, though, we’ve actually thought about the direction we want to go, what we want to share and what we’d like to achieve. That means ripping out most of the current stuff and shoving it back in where it fits better or getting rid of it altogether. 2014 is going to be our year for relevance of content! Of consistency, regularity and… Stop laughing! We mean it!
Okay, maybe we won’t have everything worked out right away. But bear with us and we’ll get there. Beginning with posting more than once a month and not missing major calendar events…
Merry Aprez-Christmas, everyone!
Gem and Kin
(Assorted respectful gestures of affection.)