Mikes Thoughts

Daily endeavors

Since our trip to Sihanoukville, I’ve felt this desire to lessen the writing here. Maybe to write longer things less often than daily. Most of the writing I do is across days anyways. I like starting a thing one day and then seeing where the threads go the next. Oftentimes I am both surprised and delighted that the blog goes in a completely different direction. I often just change the front matter date or add in a markdown heading to separate out the days. I don’t know why. It doesn’t ever really matter what day I write or even post a thing. The idea for me is to just write. It has been that way even when I decide to change the blog out. I keep the old posts and every so often wonder about putting them out there.

One thing interesting lately for me is changing my YouTube daily vlogs. I like to watch different people in different cultures experience their days. Now I enjoy the Japanese daily vlogs because they are silent. For some reason not listening to some ranting and raving or even thoughtful speculation made orally seems attractive and peaceful to me. Maybe it’s why I prefer this to doing my own YouTube channel. I don’t think I would enjoy the daily or even weekly or whatever schedule of doing YouTube videos. There are too many things I don’t like so I tend to watch some in my RSS reader to get away from some of the elements YouTube insists I should see like comments or even their flimsy algorithms that only rarely bring more value to my watching when I do use a browser.

The Japanese vloggers seem to endorse this different quality of life. This slowing down and measuring not only the food they cook but the moments they keep. They seem to want to explain more about their lives but want it done in a way that lets us all see rather than hear it. I wonder what the others I watch every so often that do daily life in Thailand or Cambodia would be like with no spoken words. Might be nicer.

anyways as you can see

Just about anything is fertile ground for me to write the things. It’s like a walk to me I guess. The walk happens but streets come up and sometimes I backtrack to a road or side street walked by and taste it. Some of the alleys and side streets are quiet like the Japanese vloggers. They seem ready to yield but still hide the things of their worth.

This kinda brings me to the topic if there is one of daily endeavors of mine wishing to write here. It is not a job or a schedule or a list of ideas in some note. Truth is I don’t do notes or schedules or lists. What you find here is what I just decide to go do. It’s like my silent take on a Japanese life vlog. Maybe a photo sprinkled in with words.

Since I’m not a great conversationalist and would probably make a lousy “day in the life” vlogger, writing the blog has always seemed more expressive and lets me wander to new places as I want. I don’t see some of the vloggers really finding new ways to create their content that would keep me engaged. There is only so much of their daily lives I can take in so I kinda stop watching them in favor of the less often vlogs I do enjoy. Or the writing.

And finally it’s the less often thing for me. It’s almost time for me to want to go so I think I’ll write a bit at some coffee shop down the street where I wish to escape to. Find some words there much like I do most days.

the endeavor is not daily

Now at V coffee. The little Khmer coffee place I can sit. Inside and out of some world. Some words. There’s this desire always to state the obvious. Perhaps in new ways. So I guess it’s not still obvious if I wander down new places in words.

What I want with the endeavor is to create. Whether I create daily or I find another metric it’s all the writing itself. Not some manic cadence like some bloggers either their challenges or finding my way to some wonderful blogroll where visitors come to this little corner to see what words of wisdom are left. I’m pretty sure they leave disappointed. That seems okay too. Maybe my daily life in Cambodia is not so well covered here as I do on my mastodon account. I always feel that’s the place for whatever daily expression I have.

So I think this will change. It will be more of the same but yet less. I want to write more on life choices and why I did what I did and still do. Life in Southeast Asia is not some far distant perfection or utopia. I want to write on that too. I left America many sleeps ago. Then I flew to Japan. Perhaps it’s why now I find this affinity to the Japanese vloggers. They seem to offer an expression I can find easily. Others here speak loudly and proclaim their nirvana. I have not found it here. That’s okay too. Maybe like Bono I haven’t found what I’m looking for. Maybe I stopped looking far and wide and instead want it in my steps. There I am sure to lose sight of it all and thereby find more.