Name tweak and other fun stuff...

Okay, it's Saturday and I'm doing some maintenance and 'tweaking' of the blog and wanted to check in. There will be more later today.

A couple of things while I'm here:

First, I've changed the name of the blog and the description to better suit any audience. Plus, 'The Outer World' was being interpreted by Google's spiders to have something to do with religion and spirituality and all kinds of Christian ads were popping up. For the record, I will state that I am NOT Christian. I am also not religious in any way, though I am tolerant of the religious choices of others (just don't ever get into a big discussion with me about religion, really!). I was Catholic from birth (i.e. I never had a choice in the matter) and after a number of years of mandatory feelings of guilt and 'believing without seeing', I moved on and have never looked back (except to occasionally make sure that the big, ugly monster isn't trying to sneak up on me again and swallow me up!).

*For any other so-called 'recovering Catholics' like me out there, I'm sure you will understand when I say this: you never really seem to lose the feeling of being guilty about something in most things you do. Because I was indoctrinated (and, yes, in Catholicism, this IS the most appropriate word to use) with this sense of having to be careful never to mess up, I've always felt more anxious than many other people in my every-day life. I just want to enjoy my life but there's always this feeling in my gut that I'm constantly screwing up or 'committing sins', even though I know myself well now and can look anyone square in the eye and confidently say: I'm as good a person as you can find out there and have nothing to apologize for.

I'm babbling, sorry. The blog's new name is 'Out Through the In-Door' which is a play on the 1979 album title 'In Through the Out Door' from Led Zeppelin. In this case, I'm inviting my viewers to get out of their own worlds, with their various boundaries and barriers, by seeing through me. In that way, people can virtually escape to another world as seen through my mind, and experience things that might not exist in their own personal worlds. For example, as a 'foreigner' (by the way, we don't like being called that) in Japan, I can provide a perspective to Japanese people from a person who has come from outside of Japan. I can also provide a perspective on life in Japan as experienced by someone who isn't Japanese, who hasn't lived here very long, who has a very different way of thinking about many things.

So that's that. New name. New style in some ways. And the mentality behind the blog has changed. I want it to be interesting and, maybe, inspiring, so I can't define it so narrowly as to make it for school/class purposes, nor will it be geared mainly towards the people of Tamano. I hope as many people in Tamano and Okayama as possible will have an opportunity to enjoy something on my blog. But I want anyone who comes across it in the great blogosphere to find something intriguing here for him/her.

Since I am home alone this weekend, I want to send some virtual love to my Woman who is currently in Yokohama. Can't wait for you to come back tomorrow, C!

I will try to get back here this evening to talking about things that happened last week, as I promised. You know, there is never enough time in a day! Anyone who knows me well knows that I have declared TIME as my great enemy in life. I wish I could figure out how to control it.

If anyone has ideas about that, please send them to me by email or by posting a comment!

I'm out...
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Played while I posted: The Durutti Column - Requiem For My Mother
via FoxyTunes