I have 27 days left before my final working day at my current job. My boss wants me to leave the apartment they arranged the following day, so this weekend I'm taking a good majority of my stuff with me and moving it to the new apartment.

It's a long weekend and should be nice to feel like I'm setting up a different phase of things, but I'm feeling pretty down about it.

A couple of weeks ago, my best friend had a surgery she has to have about once a year. Before that, our communication was spotty, which is understandable, because she felt bad. However, since she's been recovered and back to work, I sense her anxiety more and it seems like we communicate less. I'm trying to be patient and not bring it up in a whiny way, but I also can't help but notice how much I rely on her attention to feel sane. It's been getting better for a couple of days, but I feel like if things happen that make my few close friends all busy at once, I'm just kinda dying inside.

I speak to my dad once or twice a week on the phone. I don't have other family much to speak of.

And I really miss it, I think.

People deal with their families or chosen families even when it's inconvenient and bothersome. I feel like I'm the least important person in every equation. I don't have anyone with whom I've earned the place of being worried about even when it's kinda hectic to do so. And I feel like everyone else has that person, somewhere, but I don't.

I had a couple of acquaintances both of whom I thought I might see this weekend. Have one meal with. Seems both will have to bail.

I'm just tired of never being the person someone looks forward to these days. My best friend is great, but I feel like only having her is unfair. But what do I do?

Just curl up and shrink, I guess.

I'm so gloriously checked out at work right now. One more class. Then I'm finished until January 8. I have only had one week off since I got to Japan, back in August.

Once I return, I'll have like 11 weeks left on the job and gotta move to get ready for the next one.

Right now I'm very sleepy, but I have creative thoughts. Terrible how it always coincides.

I want to write some kind of kagehina fic.

It's not even my main ship but I'm tempted to write Nie Huaisang/Jiang Cheng because a friend gave me a brain worm.

And I kinda wanna write a vampire modern au tgcf/mdzs thing.

And all year I've had the urge to kinda start work on the Steins;Gate/Madoka Magica idea from years ago.

Last Thursday was just another day for me. Thanksgiving isn't a holiday in Japan, and I don't have family here. My dad and stepmother did wish me well on the day.

I did have a meeting with the international school people finally, though, via Zoom, that morning. They finally officially offered me the job, and I signed some papers through PDF editing.

I need a little more information from them to feel like it's completely real.

I plan to send an email to my current boss giving her a few extra days on top of 90 days notice.

I mulled over telling her in person first, but honestly, having observed her as a person as much as I have, I think she will have an immediate emotional upset reaction followed by reasoning through it. And honestly, I don't want to be there for the emotional reaction. So I feel I'm justified in emailing her Friday after work.

There's a good chance I'll be seeing her on Saturday briefly anyway because I'm coming to their church's Christmas concert. Here's hoping that will inspire good will instead of annoyance.

I have to keep reminding myself that this had to have happened to her many times since starting this business.

I have to do what's right for me, even if I hate causing inconvenience.

Fandom Updates

I complain about never getting to talk about fandom stuff, but it's largely because I can't think of effort posts to make. Here's a little list of stuff:

• I'm participating in a Secret Santa exchange over on Beast's Lair. I finished the fic a while ago but might look over it one more time before it's revealed.
  
• I'm also doing a Secret Santa on the SnowBaird discord server. I'm about 2/3rds of the way finished. Hoping to be finished before the weekend, but we'll see.
  
• I am doing the lyricaltitles Bingo and I might actually finish a row before the end of December.
  
• Friend prompted me to start watching the Fallout show. I like it, even if it isn't the most groundbreaking thing that has ever been released. It's interesting to see the story in this format. I like Lucy, even if she feels like a stock character I would make in an RPG. Maybe that's why I like her.
  
• I got said friend to start watching The Untamed with me, and he actually seems to enjoy it. It's nice when both my best friends kinda like the same stuff with me. Feels less lonely.
  
  I really want to do something in Untamed/MDZS fandom, but I don't quite know where to begin.

I stayed home all day on Saturday. Given my lifestyle, I often find it very hard to carve out a day where I don't spend a couple hours at least walking around, sitting in a restaurant just to eat, or whatever.

I had a bunch of meat I decided I needed to cook which had finally thawed. I made some of it into chili and some of it into sloppy joe with a sauce recipe I found online.

I also spent quite a bit of time tidying and throwing things away. My apartment isn't immaculate by any means, but I did a few things that had been put off for weeks now, and it's nicer to walk into for me.

I still feel a little sad about the impermanence, but I'm also looking forward to hopefully changing jobs early next year.

I stayed home mostly because I knew I'd be going out today, Sunday. I went with a coworker to visit the main church in Utsunomiya. I technically work in a church, or a building that serves as a church on Sunday. I live five minutes away from it, but despite this I've never actually attended a service. I attended a baptism celebration once. But I guess, I just kind of want to keep an extra day away from my boss most weekends, and she'd end up being the interpreter if I went. I care for my boss as a human being who's trying her best but I don't want to be best friends with her.

The woman who took me to the church is only a worker a couple days a week, and she doesn't have any authority over me, so I was much more comfortable.

Next weekend, I have to go on Sunday on a day trip. I say have to. More weird social obligations. But I mostly look forward to it. Sometimes it's nice to have plans, but I seriously am so tired of associating with things that are tangentially related to work that most of the time I don't want to.

I also got my nails done today. I've only had them done twice since being in Japan. I do it because it makes me feel a little less unkempt and frumpy but also because gel nails just... don't break or tear, which is nice.

This weekend, I also got a friend to watch The Untamed with me, second episode, and he got me to watch two episodes of the Fallout series.

I would really like to write for The Untamed fandom but dunno how to start.

Ugh I just wish it didn't feel like such an uphill battle to write anything in today's fandom climate. It's lonely.

Election night in America was Wednesday morning here in Japan. A few weeks ago, not even thinking of the date, I agreed to come with my boss and an elderly student of hers that she sees on Wednesday mornings on an outing to see autumn leaves and the historical Tokugawa shrine/grave thing in Nikko. I honestly didn't realize Nikko's past historical importance. Anyway, when I realized that I would be on this outing while refreshing my phone for election results, it felt like being forced to go fiddle while my country set itself on fire.

When Biden stepped down as the candidate, I allowed myself to hope for a moment.

But one of the reasons I came to Japan, looking back, was dread of this election and its seemingly foregone conclusion.

I saw princessofgeeks's post about the election and read through some of the comments, and I feel like that both her feelings and some of the comments expressed summarize my feelings rather well. The negative and frightened ones. I feel like we're all preaching to the choir with this.

I am heartbroken and for the first 24 hours after learning that it was pretty much done, I couldn't eat. I had eaten a meal with my boss and her student that didn't sit well in my stomach, both because I usually eat my meal of the day after work and because the world was crumbling before me. I came home after a long, long day and went to bed without eating. This morning, I forced myself to eat a piece of toast with some of the fake Zax sauce I made a week ago that's still in my fridge. I managed to eat a small meal at McDonald's tonight after work. I have been mostly avoiding McDonald's as an effort to stand in solidarity with Palestine given the global McDonald's apparatus's duplicitous role in all of it. However, there are very limited options for what's open after I'm finished with working: Gusto, McDonald's, Saizeriya, Sukiya, and Yakiniku King. There might be a few others I haven't tried, but those are the ones I've been to. Oh, and Hamasushi, but I kind of haven't been into sushi this time in Japan. And they started selling Pepsi instead of Coke. Terrible. As you can see, McDonald's is the only kind of home-like food I can get access too. However, the paradox of fast food being more expensive than sit down restaurants holds true again, in that I could've gotten more food for less money or the same money at Gusto when I decided I wanted some chicken nuggets to really roll in my desire to be a kid or at least in my 20s again.

I miss my mother so much right now. I feel like so many people get their moms way up into their own retirement ages. I understand that it's because those women had children younger, in part. My mom had me when she was 36. But my mom also died kind of young, at 66. However, I can't help but feel I'm glad she didn't have to watch this happen again.

Both my parents were staunchly conservative voters when I was little. I identified as a Republican as a kid, because that's what my parents were, and I believed they were right about everything. I knew they disagreed with Democrats for some reason. Reasons unclear in my mind. They offered simple explanations, none of which stuck. I think the big thing was that they didn't want to explain abortion to a child. My parents believed that abortion was killing an innocent human, and that was that. This, of course, was influenced by cultural and religious rhetoric, but I think it was also in no small part because my mom was born with a birth defect, and she knew that in a world where abortion was an acceptable choice and a known option, it was likely that she and people like her would never get the chance to be born. It was also in no small part because my parents were poor people who had to make a financial investment in my mom's fertility for her to have a one and done pregnancy to have me, though she kind of believed she may have had an unknown miscarriage early in her marriage due to a particularly scary period incident.

My dad's favorite TV show ever in the history of anything is The West Wing. And a lot of it is patriotic idealism that I feel like is laughable in our current climate. However, I think that this show has ultimately had a majorly positive impact on both myself and my father. When I was a kind, I went through a phase of wanting to be a lawyer because of the character Ainsley Hayes - a Republican who ends up working in the Democratic White House of the show - and I was so taken with her because she was a southern woman in this context. But later, as I grew older and my dad kept watching reruns of this show as soon as streaming became a thing, I learned that even if I only half-understood the show when I was a kid and we watched it every time there was a new episode on TV, hat I probably learned some of the nascent ideas that would make me a more compassionate and left-leaning person as I grew older. And I think it did for my dad and, to a lesser extent (because she watched it less frequently with my dad), for my mom. So, it may not be perfect by any means. But I sort of wish I lived in their world instead of my own.

(When I say my dad really likes the West Wing, I once named a TV that needed a name for device purposes "West Wing Machine" for him, and he watches it almost every night before sleeping. It's his comfort show. When The West Wing got moved from Netflix to HBO Max, I was pretty broke, and so were my parents, but around Father's Day, I bought a subscription mainly just so he could have his show back.)

Anyway, back on the issue of reality. Despite being relatively conservative people, my parents always tried to be good people. Despite embracing some level of moral homophobia, they welcomed my queer friends into their home, usually without any awkward commentary. My mom never knew and my dad still doesn't know that I'm bi, but despite ignoring all the signs that their daughter had all the weird and queer friends, they were never that kind of homophobic. However, over my adult life, I watched my parents slowly give in on certain subjects. They carried the baggage of their political/religious convictions that tended toward the conservative, but by the time the 2020 election came around, my poor, brave, dying mother spent some of her last months of coherence and relative peace trying to convince her relatives on Facebook that Trump was dangerous and not in any way a representative of or better for Christianity than Biden.

And no one would listen.

My parents can/could sometimes be moved by reason. So many people in America cannot.

My dad also surprised me last night when he expressed a clear stance on exceptions to allow abortion. He's still not there on it being a free right for anyone who decides they need one, but he's so much more open on the issue than he used to be. Clear and obvious support for it in cases of incest and rape where the person decides they don't want to keep the baby, if pregnancy occurs. He said that if I were raped, he would drive me to a doctor himself if I fell pregnant, even if it were restricted or illegal. That floored me, because it's not the kind of thing I grew up hearing. I learned, I made arguments, and between that and other people in his life, he changed his mind. It's not where I'd like it to be, but it's so much different than what I used to hear.

Anyway, that kind of thing... both breaks my heart for my parent(s) who live in this climate where half or more of the people they know are buying and gobbling up the bullshit, and they feel the need to keep inroads to have some positive influence on people who post hateful, cruel things one day and say reasonable things the next and makes me very proud of them. It makes me feel a little hope because my parents so often seemed like the rocks that couldn't me moved on some issues, but in the end, they both came out hard against this man, even when it has cost them relationships and even when they didn't really wholeheartedly support the alternative.

I also understand that America's role in overseas politics was a huge issue this time around. Republicans want us to send less money to Ukraine. Leftists want us to send no money to Israel. I don't even have to explain which side I'm on there, but I also just think about the ripple effects we have without lifting a finger.

I'm tired and rambling now, but I guess I wanted to say that even though I went through and am still going through a lot of terrible feelings of fear, that from the reading I have done most recently, I think it's important not to give up. It's important to keep showing up for people you love.

I have to do a shit-ton of emotional labor to keep going through the motions of my job every day. If I had a job where it was possible to just call in and take the day off, I might have pulled the rug in behind me today and tomorrow. But I can't do that. I don't really have a choice. And some of it is phony and feels phony. But sometimes it feels real that most of our lives are lived in a room with a handful of people. The systems around us are scary and can suck, but even people living under authoritarian regimes often have joy and entertainment and don't die.

I'm very scared of the possible worst outcomes of this, for myself, my loved ones, and the world. But I do believe in God and that even in the midst of terrible things that come to pass as the result of human will that there are sometimes interventions. And, you know, even if the skeptics out there are right, and my faith is nonsense, I think that makes it even more important to live your life for the love you have for others. And that's what makes us different from the Them we are now so rightfully scared of.

Recently, I finished the audibook I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, and I've got to say that it has only become more timely since I finished it a week ago.

Conflict drives so much of what we hear and see and do. It drives our media and our political machines. But I don't think it's necessarily reckless optimism to say that there are more people on Earth than there have ever been before. If we're about to reach a crescendo and then the end, we won't regret having loved people. If we're not about the reach the end, and human and civilization do, in fact, continue to survive, it's loving people genuinely - building communities, helping others, developing empathy and compassion - that's going to make it possible.

So, sometimes, I feel despair and anger. I don't think that's going to go away. And I do feel like I've got to brace for impact, that life could not only not get much better for me but that it could get a whole lot worse. But I keep praying, and I keep hoping that, by loving people and finding joy where I can, I will forestall the worst of things around me. I have not been blessed with a life completely free of struggle, and it is dangerous, evil prosperity gospel stuff to suggest that earthly struggle is a sign God doesn't love us. But I have been blessed (I believe by God, or you can believe by chance or luck or privilege) that every time something bad has happened in my life, I have been generally shielded from the worst possible version of it. I hope that won't come to an end. I weep, because I feel like that sensation makes me entitled and privileged. However, I also believe that I am loved, by God and by a handful of really wonderful people.

So: If we believe God is real and in the world and some part of its function, loving people is a holy duty.

If we believe God is a fanciful notion that people use to spiritually bypass suffering, then we are perhaps even more bound by duty to love each other and love any beauty or joy we can find because if nothing means anything cosmically, all anything means is how we make use of the wonderful quirk of an ability it is to be able to feel compassion and love and to do good and beautiful things, even if it seems there are a hell of a lot of people who lack that capacity.

I am reminded, again, of my favorite poem. I don't have it memorized to recitation standards, but I keep thinking of it in tiny snippets.

https://poetrysociety.org/poems/a-brief-for-the-defense

( Read more... )

Writing is a lonely prospect these days. I remember when LiveJournal made it easy to feel like there was a community around writing for a fandom or a ship, even if it was small. It tended to lead to greater creativity because it didn't feel like screaming into a void.

These days, I'm tempted to post my stuff here, but I feel like most people who read my blog as very general fellow bloggers, so I wonder if I should make a little quarantine community for it to separate the fandomy posting of fic from the general rambling about life and stuff. But then I wonder if that's just keeping any eyeballs from the fic that would've otherwise been on it.

This was a conversation people were having on reddit earlier, too, to which I contributed.

So, tomorrow morning was supposed to be my in-person meeting and second interview with the international school. It was going to be hellish to push through and do it, because I had to go to the Kanuma Autumn Festival and another woman who's closer to my age. I was really glad to meet the latter. Anyway, it meant that I couldn't go tonight and spend the night in Tokyo which would have made the interview reasonable to do.

I was still going to do it and accept a hellishly long and kind of miserable wet rat sort of day.

But then, over the past month or so, I have come to the conclusion that it is best for me to focus my energy on trying to work with the Canadian immigration firm and go to my best friend so we can be each other's family and support system.

And even if it doesn't work out, the next-best thing is to go back to my dad and - however uncomfortable it might be with my stepmom - crash-land there long enough to find a job in the area that's close enough for me to not be completely on my own. And, in the eventuality tat my father passes away, I'll get something in the way of inheritance but not very much. But it will be a lot easier to use it in America or Canada.

The exchange rate of the yen being 0.6-0.7 of a US cent is miserable. When I was here a few years ago it was .9 something. (Forgive me if this is the wrong way to express this math. I'm bad at math.)

But anyway, I sent an email when I got home tonight trying to respectfully ask to reschedule this interview. I should have refused to do it on this day in the first place, because I do have to be in Tokyo but for the purposes of a training that my boss has asked me to attend.

I'm a lot more emotionally at peace with my job and my boss lately, and part of it is knowing that it's not indefinite. The absolute longest I would stay is two years, but in all likelihood, I'm going to be telling her that I'm going home after a year soon. And it's a lot easier for me to stomach that than telling her I'm going to a better job in Tokyo, even though either is technically fine.

Doing the math of what 400,000 yen a month really is in USD made me realize that even if it's a really nice living here, it might be pigeon-holing myself into a life that I don't really want. I thought I did, because I thought it was the best I could do for myself. But now, thinking about having my People closer to me long-term as a real possibility, I think it was good for me to do this but that long-term, I won't be satisfied here.

I just really hope I am not making a mistake.

Plus, if this school doesn't want to reschedule a meeting/interview, when they're going to be there anyway tomorrow, they're probably not the kind of folks I would want to work for anyway. With them being the back-up plan now, I just hope that I am not being an idiot.

October 2nd is a really hard day for me now. It was my parents' wedding anniversary. Incidentally, one month from today will be my dad's anniversary with his new wife. They church-eloped, and I only knew a few days before it was happening and didn't attend. So, the only reason I even remember it is because my dad just so happened to get married one month after my parents' anniversary.

I try so hard not to be resentful of my stepmother just for being married to my dad. It is harder than I would like it to be. Our personalities clash, and part of me feels like she's stolen my sense of home entirely. My dad says that as long as he has a home, I have a home if I need it. However, the reality of that might be a lot worse with her being the one with more money in their relationship. Of course, I wouldn't even want to stay indefinitely, but it hurts.

My parents were great for the most part and certainly better than many stories I've heard. However, I think everyone's parents screw them up in some ways. Mine did by making me very cared for in an insular environment. When I was growing up, they hardly ever pushed me to make peer friends, because there simply weren't many in our church or social life, and I did see peer cousins from time to time, and I guess they thought that was enough, even when I was an outsider even among them. Then, when I did go to kindergarten, other kids didn't like me much. It became a vicious cycle. I kept getting hurt anytime I was exposed to peers more. Then, my parents would reflexively try to protect me. Plus, my mom had this attitude that I didn't need some big social life as a teenager. That I would get one later. Pfff. The only people I'm still friends with are people I met online in my mid or late teens who have stuck around. But yeah, even into my adulthood, I kept ending up back with my parents at home. Even though my dad and I would clash about just how bossy he gets to be if I'm an adult living at home, those times were some of the only times I ever felt safe.

My parents got into being homeowners with a shoebox of a house in the 1970s and were able to use that equity to keep owning a home. My dad still owns the home he and my mom bought in 2009, but he's currently trying to get it ready to sell, as it takes almost all of his income to keep the payment made and the maintenance utilities paid while living in his new house with my stepmother. But the thing is, no matter where they lived, it was relatively clean. We usually had a dog. I was able to use a kitchen when and how I wanted. I had somewhere to park my car.

All luxuries that I've never been able to have since I got out of my college dorm, outside of living at home.

I hate to be envious, but one reason I came to Japan was the ability to have an apartment of my own. I hate Japanese kitchens, but it's better than having no kitchen to use at all or to have to very awkwardly tiptoe around using it. But the reality is, I still only use it a couple of times a week. I'm exhausted no matter where I work.

I came here, also, because I thought that a predictable schedule with little to no overtime would help me to recover in some ways. But the thing is, having 10 or 11 20-30 minute classes a day actually is a lot harder than having 4-6 nearly-hour-long classes a day that all cover the same material or have much more discrete material to cover. I feel so stupid for coming here, in some ways. But on the other hand, I know that if I had endured into another late-spring and late-summer cycle with my last landlord, I might have lost my fucking mind. See previous post about the heat.

Even as it was, I felt sick all the time for months here. At least air conditioning was, in fact, used, but I had this blister on the side of my nose BELOW the nosepad (not under) of my glasses that wouldn't/couldn't heal, because it seemed to be the result of indirect friction from the salt on my skin from sweat. I have to wear my glasses to function, and the pad itself wasn't constantly rubbing it, but it would gather up sweat, which would bead, and then it would slowly dry on my face or I would rub it away. In either case, sometimes it felt like I was wiping sand off my nose from the amount of sweat that would have pooled and dried.

I know that I am blessed to have not been directly kicked in the face by climate crisis fallout. Parts of my home region of Appalachia are or were underwater and are now ruined after Hurricane Helene. No one ever expected it could hurt that much that far inland, and, of course, the region wasn't prepared for it.

But still, I do feel like summer personally has a beef with me every single year. It literally makes me sick, and I was born and raised in hot, sticky summers.

I'm sure that my emotions of missing my mom and the status quo I used to have with my parents is bleeding into everything. Plus, Wednesday has taken the title of busiest stupid fucking day at work. It's not as bad as when it was Monday, thankfully, but it's because most of my students are one-on-one and there's no hostility toward me from any of them. It's still a lot.

But yeah, I have just felt like I've wasted the first third of my life, if I'm "lucky" to live that long, but that the rest of it is just... arduous and long and for what?

I wish my faith would provide me more solace about it, too, but I just keep thinking about how not everyone who gets protected by God gets much joy out of it. I feel, sometimes, like I was just born to serve others without any balm of getting much back out of it. I love teaching, but the emotional labor of it is killing me.

And no matter where I look, I'm not seeing much opportunity to find the space to do anything to get myself out of the trap.

A week from Sunday, I'm going to have an absolutely hellishly long day. I have to get the very earliest train I can to Tokyo so I can meet people who want me for a second interview and then leave that and go to a four hour long training that my boss wants me to go to but is also attending so I have to be sneaky and not travel WITH her because I can't have her know I'm interviewing for another job. Otherwise I could've had the travel comped. Sucks.

If something doesn't come out of that interview, though, I think I need to get my ducks in a row to go home. I don't know what would even come after that. And if I don't get a job starting next spring, there's probably no reason I can't just tell my boss that I'm very tired and weary and just feel homesick and like I want to go home and leave after the completion of one year instead of two.

But if that doesn't happen... what am I going to do?

I don't have a house. I don't really want an empty house. In fact, I don't really want the extra room that I have in this apartment. (I don't really use the bedroom except as a closet after the first couple weeks living here.) I don't even decorate my apartment because I know it's very impermanent no matter how you slice it. I could buy cheap decorations at Daiso, but I know I'd throw them out when I moved, and I feel plagued by the waste issues in society.

Everything feels like I waste. I feel like a waste in a capitalist society.

Most of my family is dead. I don't have friends I can turn to for help. Most of them are in countries other than Aemrica, and none of them are really in a position to give me a crash landing spot. And while I think I could crash land and dad's for a little while, I'd need a plan for what the fuck to do next. And I don't have one.

I love teaching, but it's killing me by drops. I give so much love and effort to it, and I just... don't get to be loved back by anything, most of the time, it seems.

I can't have a pet for the same reason I can't have decorations. I feel like there's no point to anything I'm doing. I'm not building toward anything.

It seems to me that everyone who has anything is either very STEM brained or married/partnered. I don't have that.

If any of you know the most non-STEM STEM job I could get or have any hope to offer, I would appreciate it.

Of the shows I've gotten into but not in as much of a ~fandom way~ as others, two that stand out are The Society, which I watched back in 2019 during my first experience in Japan, and Tokyo Vice, which I binged twice during the time I took off before coming back to Japan this time.

One thing about me is that I rarely give random shows a chance. I have such a back-log of thins that I want to share with my best friend or others in a sort of fannish way that it's rare for me to sit down and check something out on a streaming service with no plan.

Both The Society and Tokyo Vice came to me in those ways.

The other day, I was thinking about The Society again and, specifically, the Cassandra character, because at the time I thought she was a good fancast for Saber | Artoria Pendragon from Type Moon/Fate. I was trying to remember the actress's name and, upon finding that it was Rachel Keller, was almost floored to learn that Cassandra from The Society and Samantha from Tokyo Vice are the same actress.

What a difference costuming and bangs make.