So……. Cont.

So, my laptop is still broken, but progress has been made on the technology front. I’ve arranged to have a couple of desktop computers from my school’s computer center (which, up until this point, have been sitting in boxes) set up in my house so that I can give little computer classes to interested people in the village. This is, of course, a thinly veiled excuse to get my hands on a computer that I can use whenever I want, but it seems to have worked out well for all parties involved. McKenzie also now has internet access at her office, so what I can do is type anything I want at my computers at home and put them on a USB key and then upload them to the internet whenever I make it down to Litz Litz. Not a bad interim solution and, of course, I have a new keyboard on order from the US which should be getting here in a few weeks. So, all’s well right? Back to blogging! Well, here’s the thing: I don’t think I’m going to continue Life in the Ring of Fire. There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, and most practically, my recent technical issues have led to a great backlog of entries which seems pretty daunting and is thus leading to an infinite cycle of procrastination in which I end up writing nothing at all. Secondly, it just doesn’t seem as appealing anymore to write up week-by-week updates of my life. A few weeks into my second year volunteering and things are starting to seem awfully repetitive, the stories are the same, the jokes are the same, and the frustrations are the same. Nothing seems new enough to commit to paper. Finally, I seem to have unintentionally wrapped up Life in the Ring of Fire already. The last entry I posted before my computer stopped working actually closed things up pretty nicely (I thought), so maybe it was meant to be. I’m going to heed the writing on the wall and not force something to continue that should just finish (TV series such as Scrubs, House, and The Office might want to try this). It’s been a pleasure to write Life in the Ring of Fire and I hope all of you found it pleasant to read. Your comments, praises, and critiques have meant the world to me and I thank you for them. I can’t tell you how great it feels to know that things I’ve written are being read and talked about.

That being said, I hope you all will continue reading, because I am certainly not done writing. Rather than try to force a second season of Life in the Ring of Fire, I’m going to start fresh. I’ve written a series of articles about being back in the US for Christmas which I’m going to post in a series called Home for the Holidays. I think I only have five or six issues, so that will just be kind of a short intermission. After that, I’m going to launch a new series called “Yu No Kick” to cover my second year in Peace Corps. I’m going to go for a more open format. Instead of going through what I’ve been doing each week, I’m just going to write about whatever comes to mind. There will still be plenty of stories, I’m sure, as well as a few random thoughts about, say, centipedes, or toilets. I’ll try to keep the one-a-week thing going at the very least, but I might start throwing out two or three issues in a week if I’m feeling adventurous. We’ll see. And by the way, “Yu No Kick” is a Bislama slang term meaning something along the lines of “come on” or “chill out.” For example, if someone doesn’t want to let you buy kava on credit you might say “yu no kick,” meaning “come on man, it’s me, you know I’m good for it.” I hope you all enjoy.