Introducing the new Avoidinglife.com!

When I finished up my stint in Japan last year many people asked me "What's going to happen to Avoidinglife?". Well I never really had a good answer for them because I honestly didn't know. I thought I would continue blogging every day the same as before, however since coming home the blog has instead been dying a slow death. It didn't really make sense to continue writing about Japan anymore, plus I can no longer "avoid life" as easily as I once did. I also was becoming somewhat concerned that the whole avoiding life thing might be giving the wrong idea to prospective employers. I don't think it's too far fetched to worry about that considering how Time magazine stuck me with the moniker of "Japanese Slacker" a few years back.

I didn't want to just shut down the blog completely, so I decided to move it instead to my new domain name: Klopsy.com(I've since moved it again to avoidinglife.com/blog). What on Earth does "klopsy" mean you ask? Well klopsies are a type of German meatball that my mom likes to make. If you ever get a chance you really should try some. They are delish! Here's how you make them, and here's what they look like. Anyway, that then left me with the dilemma of what to do with the Avoidinglife.com domain. I've been thinking for a long time about some way to allow other expats to contribute to the site without it becoming a burdensome and time consuming project for me to maintain, but couldn't think os a good solution.

What I finally decided to do was turn the site into a social bookmarking web application similar to Digg.com or Del.icio.us, but catering specifically to expats from around the world and the internationally inclined. With the NEW Avoidinglife you can share links to interesting articles you've read, posts from your blog, YouTube videos or anything else that you think fellow expats might enjoy. Anyone visiting the site can vote on links submitted by peers which then leads to the more interesting ones being "published" and promoted to the front page.

One neat feature of the new site I would like to point out is that anyone who posts links can also make money from doing so! Avoidinglife members can add their personal Google Adsense ID into their profile so that any link they post will also include ads that generate revenue for the member each time someone clicks on them. I'll explain all that in detail some other time.

It is my hope that Avoidinglife will continue to help promote what JETs like to call "internationalization" and provide a kinder, gentler place for expats to communicate and share than the current alternatives. Will anyone actually sign up and use it? I really have no idea, but I certainly hope so!