I spent quite a lot of my holiday time back in Australia rummaging through the mountains of crap in my storage shed in West End. Boxes and boxes of memories. I threw half of them out, I was ruthless. I can't believe the stuff I thought was important enough to save. Boxes of paperwork - old contracts, invoices, PR releases, emails, demo CD'S and so on - from a life long ago.

De-cluttering is always rewarding, and this particular round of de-cluttering served a valuable purpose. It showed me what my life used to be, and how it's changed. It helped me understand - in a period of dramatic uncertainty - the road I've travelled and... well - who I am. It reminded me that I am a person who gets stuff done. It was great.

I found, in one of the boxes, a little crystal ball I had given to my Dad for a birthday present many years ago. After we cleaned out his apartment, I put it in my little box of treasures in the shed. Pulling it free of its newspaper wrapping, I held it up to the light. looking for traces of Dad in it. A little magical sign. There wasn't one. But what I saw was cool enough to take a picture of. It was one of the things that survived the cull, and it now sits on the little alter I have made for Mum and Dad in my room. Wish that little crystal ball could show me the future.

I know many of you are waiting for news on decisions. I've made a few. Here they are.

1. My school contract finishes at the end of March, I am not renewing it and will not be looking for any similar contract to replace it. Instead, I'll be a freelance private English teacher. I figure if I teach about 4 - 5 lessons a day, it'll be enough to survive on. It'll also offer me great flexibility with my schedule, and I won't have to dress up in stupidly stiff clothes every day. Give me jeans and a tee-shirt any day!

2. In my new and immensely valuable free time, I'm going to study photography using the internet, books and practice. As this develops, I hope to start generating more photography work to supplement the minimal income I'll be earning from my private lessons. I want to be a photographer. Seriously. I have always loved taking photos. I know I have a good eye, I just need the technical skills to support that. Leap, and the net will appear. It's going to be scary financially, but I think the long term results will be so rewarding that I'm willing to take that risk.

3. I have (reluctantly) accepted that I will have to stay in Tokyo for the rest of the year as I develop my skills and live quietly and cheaply. I plan to plug into the foreign community much more this year - go to more foreigner events and bars. It's a scene I've avoided for years coz I didn't really like what I saw (lots of banker-wankers and painfully arrogant, strange, cliquey "artiste's" at the first few such events I attended - but things are changing and there are a lot of cool people out there doing really cool stuff. Look at TokyoMade, Dr Sketchy's Anti-Art School Tokyo and so on... (speaking of which, it's TokyoMade's 1st birthday today - congrats to Deanne and Masao! ).

Right now, though, I just want to try to survive this winter - apparently the coldest global winter in many years. Winter and all its associated gloom and melancholy is, I know, a necessary part of life, but this winter is proving to be harder than most. The cold just freaks me out, I don't understand it and I don't like it. So I'm not going out much (and I hate the crowds more and more each time I leave the house) and I'm certainly not doing any exercise. Spending way too much time in front of my computer - but it is mostly useful research and study stuff I'm doing here..... On the good side - I'm eating pretty well and have managed to drink more water and coffee than beer or wine in the last month which is an impressive feat, I think.

So, there you have it. That's where I'm at right now.

Oh, and tell me what you think of my new site: martinecotton.com - it's my photography site. A work in progress, of course. I wanna make it look quite flash but I am still working 6 days a week so I don't have much time to play with it at the moment.