Today at long last the database is my friend. I have convinced it, ever so gently, to import 57614 lines of geography data, and now we're well on our way to having coffee together, late-night phone conversations, and an eventual shopping spree on Rodeo Drive. If only I had more time! I was sick on Monday, busy yesterday, more busy today -- how can I build a lasting relationship with this database when I can't give it a full afternoon of attention? The challenges of modern life just keep piling up, they do.

Inspired perhaps by Dave, I started rereading Liralen's journal from the beginning, part of my pondering about what I want this journal to be and not to be and whether I can be both whimsical and honest and still write something which I am glad to be writing. I make things hard on myself, maybe, for no good reason, but I do want to do everything right -- as well as I can, even better maybe. This I realised last week sometimes is why I never start writing fiction, because it won't be good at first, and I am somewhere deep inside unwilling to do something I know won't be good, no matter how utterly foolish that is. And it is foolish, and contradictory; I sing all the time and my singing is not good, not by whatever high standard I am using to keep myself from writing. So clearly there are things I will do even if they will not be ideal, but why is writing not one of them? And is it worth it to keep this journal again when even writing a paragraph like this makes me sick to my stomach?

But, I remind myself, there are benefits. Not the least of which is letting those I care for see inside... which they do, anyway.

Driving down the 101 today, the sky was suddenly very blue, after what seems like weeks of shades of gray, and there was one enormous fluffy white cloudmass directly ahead of me, with the sun hitting it so that it shone very bright in the blue sky. Kagayaku -- that's one of the Japanese words for shining. I'm picking up so much Japanese, watching all this anime and listening to all this music, but it's all the poetic words that stick; kagayaku, hikari, unmei, kiseki... all the words that mean more than what they just mean. Language is so beautiful.