Probably about as easy as quitting these. (Image by isabel bloedwater via Flickr)

I started blogging in 2006. We called it WorkInProgress — the topic was work-slash-life — and it was one of Time.com’s founding blogs. It began as a way for me to publish every day; as a staff writer at Time magazine, you get used to hoping for one byline in print every few weeks. It quickly became what I considered my community, one I secretly liked better than my flesh-and-blood colleagues.

When I quit Time a year ago, the only thing I wanted to take with me was the blog. I wanted to keep the community of commenters, the lively discussion, the ability to vent on stuff I cared about. I didn’t want to keep the politics and the management bullshit of the workplace. So I joined True/Slant.

It’s been a year now since I launched Wasabi Mama. I got to stretch my wings as a blogger on topics like race and media and sex. Two of my top posts are about boobs. Go figure. Also I got to use words like “retard,” which it turns out makes a lot of people really mad. And I never once got hauled into an editor’s office telling me that someone upstairs would like me to tone it the hell down.

As a writer, I remain a big booster of blogging. (And alliteration.) Like keeping a journal, blogging forces you to write every day. Unlike journals, though, blogs are read by people other than you and your nosy sister. If you’re a writer, you should aim to publish. And blogging is publishing.

I also remain a huge fan of True/Slant. One thing you might not get as a reader is the sense of community among the bloggers. (There — I’ve used the word three times now in this post. It’s important to me, see?) They’re as varied as Caitlyn Kelly of Broadside, Fran Johns of Boomers and Beyond and Paul Raeburn of Family Matters. We read each other’s posts, post comments, e-mail with thoughts and encouragement. Does HuffPo do that? I think not.

Here’s the thing about blogging: it requires constant tending, and as with that orchid plant that now lives in my bathroom, I’m not doing such a good job.

The reason is the same one that got me to True/Slant in the first place: I quit my career as a journalist to pursue one as a fiction/screenwriter. It’s been a year now since my Act Two began. And I need to get to the freaking climax.

I’m not quitting on Wasabi Mama. But I am taking a blog break. I need to stop dicking around and focus on writing something that has a chance of keeping my fridge free of government cheese. My family — and my freedom from ever dealing with management bullshit again — depends upon it.

So sayonara for now. I’ll drop in now and again if I’ve got something worthwhile to say. I hope you’ll keep me on your RSS reader or Twitter or e-mail feed. Here’s to a fierce and toothsome year of the tiger, for you and me both.

Thanks to Seiji Okamura for posting this commercial for a local electric company. It’s an ode to Kobe, our hometown, 15 years after the quake. The story line: “Dear 15-year-old. You’re the reason we worked so hard to rebuild our city.”

What will Haiti look like in 15 years? Here’s to hoping for another Kobe miracle.

A commemoration of the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan. (Image via Wikipedia)

Fifteen years ago, on the evening of January 17, 1995, an earthquake devastated my hometown of Kobe, Japan.

My older brother George and I were hanging out at the apartment we shared on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It was around 8 p.m. We were bushed from our jobs, George’s as a bond broker and mine as an editor at a financial magazine.

George heard about it through his work, which involved selling U.S. securities to Japanese banks. We immediately called home, though it was before 6 a.m. The quake had hit at 5:46.

Dad answered. “We’re okay,” he said. “It wasn’t so bad. We’re fine.” He sounded shaken but otherwise unhurt. We’d learn later the quake’s strange path had spared our house, though it wiped out others along the same street. My folks lived in a totally altered world, but they didn’t know it yet. We talked a few more moments, then clicked off. Moments later, the phone lines went down. We wouldn’t get through again for days.

We watched in horror as the news showed images of our beloved city reduced to ruins. Kobe hugs a wedge between mountain range and sea, and is considered cosmopolitan and scenic. The city we saw on TV looked like a war zone. Piles and piles of broken cement; people bleeding and crying in the streets; the elevated highway pancaked, slammed as if by a giant fist.

A young man in a puffy parka stood atop the crumbly pile that used to be his home. “Okaasan,” he called, into the pile. Mother. “Okaasan.”

As I watch the horror in Haiti, all this comes creeping back. The quake magnitude in Kobe hit 6.8; in Haiti, it was 7.0. The final death toll in Kobe was 6,434 — and that was in the second-richest nation in the world. In Haiti, the Red Cross estimates 50,000.

I can only imagine the panic and frustration Haitian-Americans must feel as they watch pictures of their crushed country on TV. If we fretted back then about slow Japanese bureaucracy, Haitians must rage at their own shattered government. When natural disaster hits home, the impotence is a second trauma for immigrants.

Image by Howard O. Young via Flickr

This is the first thing my daughter Mika, age 5, said to me the other morning.

“Mom, do you know how to make ice cubes?”

“Uh, yeah, I think so.”

“Then you know how to make the PerfectBrownie™!”

On another recent day, she told me I could “turn my hair from flat to fabulous with the Instyler™.” This Christmas, she asked Santa for a Bumpit™. She gave her Grandma a Snuggie™. Last year, all she wanted was a Chia Pet™.

My kid is a veritable encyclopedia of products As Seen on TV. Why? All of these products advertise extensively on Nickelodeon, network home of “SpongeBob” and “iCarly.” Why, again? Because Nick is basic cable, and basic cable air time is cheap. Just like these products.

I can’t shield my child from our consumerist nation forever. But exhorting five-year-olds to wear their hair like Sarah Palin is a bit much, don’t you think?

Her latest object of desire? The Emery Cat™, a nail-filing gadget for felines. “It’ll save our curtains and furniture!” she shouted.

“Honey,” I said. “We don’t have a cat.”