Do nothing vacation

Sometimes it's important to take a holiday just to take a holiday. ^_^

When I first booked this Friday (tomorrow, Sep. 24) off, I was originally considering going to Hiroshima. Then I realized that I probably wouldn't have the money or energy to do so between my trips to Takayama in Gifu (night of Thu. Oct. 7th to Mon. Oct. 11th for the apparently fairly famous Takayama Matsuri!!) and Canada (Dec. 23-Jan. 5 for Christmas vacation, then again in Jan. 21-24 for a friend's wedding). And besides, I already went to Hiroshima once this year when my best buds visited in Mar.-Apr.

But I never got around to canceling my holiday request, and in the end I just decided that it'd be good to take a break.

And so far, so good!!

Today the only "productive" things I did were doing the laundry (a load of darks) and going to taiko practice. Other than that I wrote emails, went on Facebook, and read Koko Be Good and stated re-reading Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book.

Koko Be Good is the debut (full) graphic novel of Jen Wang (she has previously had short comics published in the first and second volumes of the Flight graphic novel series). I first became aware of Jen Wang's work back around 1999-2000 when I started reading her awesome awesome webcomic Strings of Fate (1999-2003) the archives of which are sadly no longer available online. =(

But anyway, Koko Be Good--buy it! From the inside flap: "Honest, wrenching, and sharply funny, Jen Wang's Koko Be Good is a stunning debut about human nature and the inhuman efforts we make to find ourselves."

The graphic novel is quite different from the original short comic of the same name (which you can read on her website, just look under Art→Comics)--but in a good way. For me it really resonated because, like so many of the characters in the story, I'm at a stage where I'm trying to figure out what I really want to do with my life. And seeing so many of my friends finding their paths and/or settling down and getting married/having kids, I feel a lot of self-imposed pressure to "not to get left behind or something." So the story really speaks to me and it's definitely a book I expect to be re-reading a lot (which is really important when you live in a tiny apartment with only a single bookshelf).

So yeah, back to my original topic...Sometimes it's really important to just take time to relax. This week, Kocho-sensei (at Kirita) mentioned that I've been less than "genki" recently and he asked if I've been really busy/working too hard. Right now actually isn't the busiest at work that I've been, but since I'm doing both Nihonbuyo (classical Japanese dance) and taiko (Japanese drumming) now, I guess I haven't had as much "do nothing" time to refresh myself as in the past, so I'm less energetic...

Plus, much as I hate to admit it, I *am* getting older. I really can't survive on just konbini bread for dinner and 4-6 hrs of sleep per night like I used to be able to...

But anyway, I'm definitely going to enjoy the rest of this long weekend by sleeping in, reading, surfing the net, taking naps, "studying" at my favourite cafe/restaurants and maybe even cooking!