I started writing this blog exactly ten years ago.
I had experimented with the earliest versions of blogger/blogspot from 2000, and registered cosmicbuddha.com on January 6 of that same year, but updated it manually until April 21, 2003. Then the blathering began.
Blogging has been extremely fulfilling for me. I used to do it because it made me want to go out and find things to write about, both online and otherwise. In the back of my mind, however, there was always a secondary purpose of leaving a record of my life and thoughts.
I started blogging when I was a salaryman in Japan. One of the things I started regretting quite early on during my time there was not being able to speak with my grandfather much before he passed. He got me into university there, told me what he wanted me to do before going back to the states, and left a trusted relative in charge of wiring me 20,000 yen (~$200) every month until graduation (which tided my hustling ass over more than a few times when things got hard).
He died before I graduated. Hell, he died before I could ever really speak with him in Japanese. And yet, his presence all around me… He left an empty house near our university (for a few years at least) which I would sneak into and take showers at (my dorm didn’t have showers and the communal bath closed many hours before I would get home from work), or throw parties at, much to the consternation of my other relatives. He was so well known by people at the university and around town, it was like having an instant upgrade wherever the hell I was at: “Oh, you’re Yoshida-sensei’s grandson? Here, take this fruit as a present,” or, “Oh, you need to get into the library archives but don’t have a permit? Well, I knew you’re grandfather, so just walk right in!” The thing is, I knew very little about my grandfather.
I gather he was a good man, and yes, that is the most important thing, but sometimes, I just wanted to know more. And so, I don’t know if anybody has read this weblog from start to finish… I suspect not. But I intended to leave a record, and a record I have left. The posts on this blog are just snapshots (sometimes literally) of my life and my thoughts, but maybe if you view enough of someone’s work you can become familiar with them in some way….
I was here.
I am here.
This was the first ten years of my documenting it openly.