partly cloudy with occasional precision

April, month of green leaves, fluffy white clouds, and surprisingly little rain.

Seeing S. must inspire me to write, because I saw her for the first time in six weeks this past Friday (she'd been out of the country), and now here I am, neglecting the homework I should be doing to type into this little window. It was good seeing her; we were both a little awkward at first, but as the afternoon went on we loosened up and start laughing and teasing one another over coffee and a slice of slightly sour peach pie. Every time I take on of these breaks from studying Japanese my fingers forget how to form the characters, but it came back surprisingly quickly. My vocabulary did, too, and S. complimented me on that, which felt nice.

Four weeks from today I will be entirely done with classes (I'm trying to get my undergraduate degree in English Literature) until August, which means I'll have almost three entire months to cultivate myself in whatever way I choose. There are many things I'd like to read, many things I'd like to write, and quite a few things I would like to do. The challenge for me is always to structure my time so that it doesn't vanish in sleep and lazy afternoons of half-heartedly playing computer games. There is nothing wrong with either sleep or games, but I want to do them with intention, because they are the things that my body or mind or heart want and not because I fall into them without meaning to and can't figure out how to escape. I waste too much time in the true sense of wasting it, doing things I don't want or need to do because I cannot figure out what I do want or need. Every vacation has been getting better, more focused, more satisfying; I hope this summer will be better still. Perhaps in this space I'll brainstorm some about things I'd like to do, or might like to do, and see what schemes for arranging my time I can imagine.

One definite scheme: to photograph things (with my newly functional digital camera) and post the photographs here. I bought the cable my camera needed, so now all the pictures from my honeymoon & other travelling are on the computer. I could share them, if I wanted to. Do I? Another thing to muse on.