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happy new years or in japanese AKEmashite OMEdetou! i’m back to trying to look busy at my desk.. i was rushing asf to get out of the house when i was leaving to canada so i didn’t leave my place very clean so i will take this week to do my late big cleaning (ur supposed to do it before new years here..) and also recover and recalibrate before getting back into the swing of things yay!

it was sooooo incredibly healing to spend the holidays back home… it’s not like i haven’t kept up with everyone but it’s a lot crazier to see the changes big and small that have happened in nearly 2 years.. like okaayy baby cousin zyra with just a bit more consciousness gained… and not just changes in my family and friends and the cities but also how i’ve changed?

trying to write this without qualifying it to hell but i’ve learned and unlearned so much to do with myself while being in japan. one thing that’s rang true for every instance i’ve had a fresh start (whether it’s starting university, finding a new job, or moving countries) is my tendency to think that this new environment will wash away all my shortcomings and dissatisfactions and “fix” me so to speak. another thing that’s rang true is that it never ever worked like that. old patterns would bubble up and i’d sit there wondering if these problems were just innate to me– that i was fighting a losing battle by trying to be someone i’m not!

but with this fresh start in particular, i was afforded the very rare opportunity to have nothing stand in the way of me truly looking myself in the eye. no family or friends to depend on, no assignments to finish and no egregious bills to stress me out. i don’t think i even realized how much real estate was always accounted for in my mind until there was suddenly so much room for thoughts that i felt sick. and it’s not like i wasn’t a chronic overthinker before too? the mind palace is a vast and nauseating place. i think i spent the first few months here just learning how to tolerate the deafening echoes and scary minecraft cave noises that reverberated to hell.

i didn’t have to deal with that emptiness. i could’ve brought all my vices over and just gamed and watched videos and doomscrolled to no end. i could’ve also just gone home. there was friction in all of these options: bearing through the difficulty of staying, the disappointment of regressing into old habits, the annoying logistics of breaking contract, and my stubbornness and laziness were at odds as they tend to be. i knew i was going to stay, though. a higher power than my hard head and love for naps was my shame. but that #complextrauma is a topic for another day!

anyways, the third installment for things that are always true is that if you abstract my goals and remove any specificities, i actually do achieve the things that i want in the end. they just never turn out how i expect! not only did i have to sit with myself, i also had to sit with all the versions of myself from the past. like dawg u will be ok. and not on some “everything happens for a reason” holiness, more on the idea that things will happen that are out of your control but what you do with them is up to you. like ok my placement is a little isolating and there isn’t much to do. i could sit and mope about what could’ve been or i could make my own pockets of warmth in little interactions here and there and in my free time build habits that could compound into a better, healthier lifestyle. the choice… is moine!

something i’ve never done though is attempt a fresh start in a place that’s very familiar to me. i’ve only gone forward, from ottawa to toronto, from toronto to japan, i’ve never repeated jobs or gone back to environments with any foundation. i think that’s what’s scaring me most about this chapter wrapping up. i’m scared that i’ll be back in my old living room and find that the past 7 years of running away have amounted to nothing. but even as i write that out, my old living room doesn’t exist in the way that i remember it anymore, really. the people and places have all changed too.

maybe i’m just making up something to be worried about. if i have to nip these behaviours in the bud a hundred times i’ll do it, but maybe there’s something there in learning to sit with them too… not sure yet… well… this morning i had instant coffee with my overnight oats and had to forego my anticipated buttered toast because i haven’t grocery shopped, and instead of that bumming me out, i just felt a lot lighter biking up the hill on the way to work. for lunch i will eat with the english department for a bit of a send-off to the best desk buddy ever hirano-sensei, but i still have the rest of the week to chit chat with her so that’s nice. tonight i’ll go pay my bills and pick up some supplies to organize my canada souvenirs and maybe look at pleated pants. and tomorrow… we’ll see when we get there!