Ah, January 2006. Over in America, Bush Jr. was president, AOL was still a viable internet service provider, and Brokeback Mountain was on everyone’s “to watch” list. Meanwhile, over here in Japan, Prime Minister Koizumi oversaw the collapse of Livedoor. And, finally, out in space, NASA brought us all a little Stardust.
But I didn’t really care about any of that. I was 31, newly married, working as an English teacher and trying to build a house. I kept a public blog on my Wordpress page and a much more private journal in my indecipherable handwriting. Now, a decade and a half later, as we’re all in various stages and types of lockdown, it seems like aa good a time as any to revisit those scribblings and sift through them for meaning, insight, or just a cheap laugh.
So, here we go. My personal January 2006 viewed from January 2021: What ARE you up to?
Jan. 1 - 5
I spent the first week of the year writing and painting. I posted a couple of rough drafts on my blog; this was a couple of years after my first ever rejection for a fiction story and about a year before my first publication. Re-reading the stories now is, well, not exactly a cringe-fest, but I can see a lot of flaws that would need to be addressed if I were to try to re-work those stories now. But, I think what’s more instructive is what my writing process was at the time - I didn’t use an outline, nor did I do any planning. I just got an idea, usually some twist on an idiom or trope, and ran with it. One thing that has not changed is my tendency to use three words where one will do.
And, as for painting, I still like the paintings I did during this time even though I know they’re not masterpieces. Unfortunately, I haven’t done any painting in years. Shortly after I did these paintings, we moved into our new house and I packed the paints away into a closet where they sit to this day. Someday I’ll get back into it and take another stab at learning to get the paints to arrange themselves on canvas the way they do in my head.
Jan. 6 - 10
With two exceptions, the next few blog posts are about media. Remember any of these?
Shopgirl
Garden State
Old School
Million Dollar Baby
Sahara
The 40 Year Old Virgin
Wedding Crashers
I mean, that’s a pretty good list of movies, right? As it stands, the ones I remember best are Shopgirl and The 40 Year Old Virgin. The latter because it’s just so damned funny and because so many of the almost-famous actors are now comedic Hollywood icons. The former…if I remember right, it made more of a splash because it not only starred Steve Martin but was based on a novel he had written. I had read the novel before watching the movie and enjoyed it, but really, I liked the movie because of Claire Danes. I’d like to write that I had a crush on her but we all know that the past tense is a lie. Moving on.
I also recommended a podcast - The Seanachai - a podcast that is, I believe, long since defunct, but notable because, in 2006, podcasts were not yet universally known as a medium. I remember, and wrote about in my journal, using podcasts for some of my classes and that the biggest challenge was making students understand what a podcast was and how to get them. It’s hard to imagine now, but this was pre-iPhone. There were no apps for easily finding and downloading podcasts; the reason I find this so interesting is that it parallels all our experiences from the past year with trying to get everyone onto the same video-conferencing platforms. I mean, you trying to get your grandparents onto Zoom, that was me trying to get my students onto podcasts in 2006.
So, those two exceptions to the media posts were a pair of attempts to lightly fictionalize real events from my life. The first was an incident in Seattle that was less a life-changing event than it was anecdote I tried to make more interesting than it actually was, but the second was based on a conversation my wife and I had that showed the difficulties in trying to communicate cross-culturally. She had asked a question about Jesus, prompted by reading a translation of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. In the ensuing discussion, several aspects of how our respective cultures treat religion came to light, not the least of which was how performatively important religion can be for Americans.
Jan. 11 - 15
In reverse order: more narrative non-fiction, some photography, and a meme. The story I wrote was another attempt at taking a real event, a somewhat painful one this time around, and making it into a story. I don’t know that it was all that successful as a story. I do know it didn’t (and doesn’t) make me feel any better about the events that prompted it. As for the photography, the pictures are mediocre, but they started to define a fast, shoot-from-the-hip style of street photography I tried on for a while. I like the framing and composition of both shots, but the focus could be better. And so, the meme:
Nowadays the word “meme” is everywhere and everyone has a good grasp on its modern meaning. In 2006, it still had to be explained to the unwashed masses, and using it on a blog was playing to the in-crowd of fellow-bloggers. The meme in question was a popular one at the time: My (year), City by City. Bloggers would make a quick list of every city they had visited in a given year and write about it. My list (for 2005) was notable for me at that time in being only 8 cities long. Humblebrag?
Jan. 16 - 20
In order: Japanese study notes, a post about swimming, audiobook recommendations, more meme talk, and then a story that I’m still quite fond of called Sundae May. I think it wasn’t too long after that publishers began to consider blogging a form of publication and would no longer accept stories that had been blogged for first run publishing rights, which means that this is one of the last stories I posted on a public blog as I worked on getting stories published in more traditional places.
Jan. 21 - 25
Tell a lie. Not only was Sundae May not the last story I’d publish on the blog, the next three out of five entries are stories. The first two are more narrative non-fiction and much less fictionalized that some of the previous ones. I wrote about an incident in high school and one from just the year before, both of which are the kind of light, slice-of-life blogging I was reading a lot of and trying to be a part of at the time. (Incidentally, the restaurant mentioned in the first story is called Lute’s Casino and it’s still around and still worth visiting if you’re ever in Yuma.) And then there’s the story, Quiet Child and the Master. Honestly, I don’t think it holds up even though I really like it. I enjoyed writing it; it was inspired by a former student (who has since passed on) who delighted in telling stories of her childhood before and during the war years. Although this is not one of her stories, it could have been. That said, I think if I were to try to publish this today, quality aside, I think it might be seen as othering and exoticizing Japanese people. At the time, I was reading a lot of work by James A. Michener and James Clavell. Both writers created interesting, fascinating stories set in and about Japan, but both are also problematic by today’s standards. They tend to exoticize Japanese people almost to the point of fetishization and that’s just not a good look on anybody. Quiet Child might put me further into their camp than I want to be.
Jan. 26 -31
The last block of entries from January 2006 is notable for a couple of reasons: I’m still friends with all the people mentioned in them and all the issues raised are still issues today:
Entry 1 is Chapter One in a YA book I still intend to go back and finish one of these days. It’s about my friend Chris Nash and how, through the power of fried-curry-buns, he can do anything.
Entry 2 is about the time in college when I lived right next door to God. It is entirely, almost word-for-word true, taken from my college journal. I will only now, 15 years later, note that the God in question was played by my friend Alan although I did not know that at the time. Anyway.
Entry 3 is another through-line. I used to really enjoy freaking students out by telling them just how much Americans love chocolate and peanut butter and with how I used to have peanut butter on apples as an after-school snack. Turns out, 15 years later, that is still an easy way to get discussion started in just about any class.
Entry 4 is my own attempt at making a meme. I was briefly, hilariously successful. I miss those guys.
Entry 5: Coney Island, Baby. I don’t really know how to feel about this. It’s maudlin, mawkish even. On the other hand, it’s a completely true incident that really did happen and really did sum up how I felt about my life at the time. And Coney Island, Baby is one of my desert island discs forever and always. Hell, the story was even accepted for publication and would have been my first professional (as in, I got paid for it) publication but the book project collapsed and was never put together. And honestly, I kind of cringe when I read it now but then again…only the names were changed; it’s just about as true as I can get.
And finally, Entry 6, a rambling rant about how none of my devices work with each other the way I want them to and how tech companies need to take a step back from innovating to just make sure everything works well. I swear, update some of the devices and I could have written this yesterday.
And that’s that. 15 years ago, I was spending a lot of time and energy writing about my life to varying degrees of fictionality and spending the rest of my time studying Japanese and going to the pool to exercise. The more things change…
Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane. Writing Learned is a lot of fun for me but it’s quite a bit less personal than the blogging I did when I was younger. Maybe that’s a bad thing, maybe I should get deeper with the main issues. For now though, if you enjoyed this special issue, let me know. You can leave a comment (you have to have a free Substack account to do so) or just send me an email and tell me what you thought. I’d love to hear from you.
Stay interested, stay curious. Learn something.
Joel