Back from a Blogging Break

So it’s been a few weeks since my last post. I went on a little blog sabbatical due to increased busyness at work, a heavy Chinese lesson load, an 8-day vacation to Thailand and, most recently, an annoying little cold. (The Packers winning the Super Bowl also required a good deal of my very precious energy and attention).

But the break was also because a lot of my thinking — and writing — occurred at a more personal level. It was really nice, and while I haven’t stopped thinking about those things or pursuing them, it will be nice to get back to some more familiar territory… though I hope to write a longerish post about some of those things in the near future.  

Anyways, I just wanted to say that I’ll be around. I also wanted to share a quote from an article on Montaigne (h/t Arts and Letters Daily) that kind of goes in hand with what I do here:

Montaigne’s literal self-centeredness has more in common with the self-portraits of the Renaissance painters who created the form (one element in an evolving complex of ideas about Man and his place in the universe), than with the compulsive exhibitionism of today’s Facebook or Twitter users. For Montaigne it’s a matter not of self-display to the world, but of self-discovery in the world and through engagement with it. Writing in the way he does is essential to that process, as he quietly contemplates the workings of his own mind. He has none of the blogger’s fear of silence or the desperate modern need to connect and communicate.