On many weekends I spend waaay too much time asleep. Saturday was quite the opposite. I slept really solidly on Friday night, got up early, and didn't go to sleep until the wee hours of Sunday morning.

Part of this was just energy and part of it was weird anxiety. I was kind of mopey and low level distressed a lot of the day on Saturday. Toward the end of the day, I got to speak with best friend a bit about some of the stuff I was talking about in my last post. Specifically, we spoke about how I sometimes get really anxious that even my closest friends don't really care about or respect what I have to say and that I'm not sure whether or not they should.

She handled it a lot more kindly than the mean parts of my self image expected.

I felt better after a few tears and reassurances. I still felt pretty wiped.

My dad is really worried about me not going to church much because I don't have much of a life outside work. I thought about going, but it's just SUCH a journey and time commitment that I did not feel like it was a good idea. Watched the livestream. Glad I did.

Took a nap in the afternoon, and I feel pretty good at the moment, but I gotta go back to bed in order to get up for work, and I just don't want it to be Monday ahead of a 6 day work week yet again.

The last time I was on my computer a few days ago, I turned on Balatro and forgot to turn it off. Now Steam and Discord have the notion that I've been playing the game for like 90 hours when it's just been like two or three of that time.

Most days, I come home and don't even rouse my computer from its sleep state, but I am still determined that I do need one for most of the hobbies I engage in when I engage in hobbies at all. The problem is that I don't really have any motivation to be involved in any hobbies except for passively learning or thinking about stuff. I have been really into youtube and podcast stuff about religion (my own or others) and weird history lately. I really enjoy it, but I have no one to talk to about it.

It's been raining for what feels like two weeks with just hours-long gaps here and there. School was closed this past Monday due to flooding risk, and seeing some of the people in the facebook group for women in Japan whining about how they should have reversed the cancellation since it was barely raining on Monday morning really made me feel a bit misanthropic. I sympathize with parents wanting a "break" from their kids and also with the particular stress of having to make arrangements or miss work to care for your children, but like... you had kids. That is part of the deal. Teachers don't exist solely for the sake of giving you childcare.

Hell, leave your kids at home if you think they're old enough to get themselves to school. It sure seems like parents here don't give a fuck about leaving their kids to get home alone and alone for three or four hours in the evenings after school.

Anyway, the rest of the week was okay.

I think I have settled into the idea of staying in my current job until the end of my contract in March 2028. Had a conversation with the international department directors, whom I got to build relationships with before they were in their current positions, so it felt pretty good. I explained my thinking, and they seemed to be fine with revisiting the question of renewal or not this time next year.

I plan to look into the idea of going to Australia for a few years after that if Canada doesn't become a viable option after the couple of online classes I'm going to take to try and make that happen and going home doesn't seem to be like it will work out. At least I'd be paid better there, and I need to think about the fact that I will most likely always need to "retire" or eventually rehome myself back to my country of citizenship due to how immigration and rights work.

One thing that I keep thinking about lately is how small I feel internally. I just wish I were more actively perceived and knew about being perceived in a positive way, not as a random person people see - the material part - but as a whole person. I hate the idea of seeing myself from the third-person, and I assume that I am not one's favorite person. Even when I have been complimented about my physical appearance, I always get adjectives that I don't particularly relate to or enjoy being perceived as.

It makes me think about how I am pretty intimately (I think) familiar with my closest friends' mindsets and have some idea how they will react to things before they are exposed to them. I'm not sure they could say the same for me unless it's about, like, media preferences. And I think some of that is on me, but I also think I stopped being as expressive and opinionated because I got tired of being talked down from anything that stood out or made them irritated that I didn't agree with and echo their sentiments about the matter.

It makes me feel like I am the only person who really knows me and that the interior landscape is pretty quiet. I live alone, and so I spend most of my hours in silence or listening to aforementioned youtube or podcasts.

While we were on vacation, I mentioned something about watching a documentary about guillotines and my best friend asked if it was an actual documentary or just a youtube video. It hurt my feels because, yes, it was a YouTube video but this person obviously does their research. And it just makes me feel like sometimes she thinks I am not actually capable of discerning information that comes in without her saying that.

I just feel like two of the closest people to me are like... super skeptical to the point that my personality and self - which are more faith-oriented and willing to believe in stuff - has just shrunk down.

I also don't even listen to music that often lately. I just feel like my role is that of a listener and not anyone who's listened to outside of being a teacher, and particularly when I am teaching English as a second language to kids who may or may not need or use it in the future, that can be even more isolating. I just feel like a waste of voice sometimes.

That drama about the TVs spying on us or whatever. I'm not sure if it would matter if mine did. It would just be recording my phone or computer playing noise at me and me being silent, all the time.

I wish I knew how to express this TO people who could actually do anything about it without it seeming like a guilt trip that would just result in me trying to fix it for them.

This weekend is the first full weekend I feel like I've had in some time. There's another one coming up where I think I have to work on both weekend days, so that is going to suck a lot, but actual classes will be over by then. I can take a random other day off, but I want to be careful with my flex hours and PTO days so that mid-year will be easier. I have to use 5 PTO days by law, but I am definitely taking at least that many around Christmas to extend the time I can visit Dad.

Today, I had my cleaning lady come over.

There's a Facebook group for women in Japan that I'm part of. We're allowed to ask for advice and resources, but I think I've figured out that there's an unspoken rule against direct solicitation of services. However, when I asked for advice about organization and cleaning when I was in over my head with my apartment last year -- just sort of hitting a wall beyond keeping it baseline livable -- I got a few requests from ladies who do for-cash cleaning services. I talked to a few of them and found a woman that I really like and vibe with.

I only need it two or three times a year, but it is such a blessing to just have someone come over, straighten my clutter, and thoroughly dust and clean the floors in a way I seem to be ABLE to do but which absolutely blows my mind to get started on. Her coming over helps me for months, though, until work gets too busy and life gets too overwhelming. Particularly with the tendonitis I was dealing with for like four months, I just... didn't want to do stuff when I didn't have to. The tendonitis seems to be turning a corner, though, this past week or so, which is nice. The little brace I bought and wore semi-consistently for a couple of weeks and a topical steroid roller seem to have helped.

On the one hand, being able to keep up with basic hygiene and home care do seem like baseline adulting skills. On the other hand, I think that the more detail-oriented stuff is like... we're all born with certain skills, interests, etc, which we can use to help ourselves and others. In more communal living, specialized labor develops, right? So I guess I shouldn't feel too bad if I can give money to someone to do something that I both am less skilled at and just don't want to spend twice the amount of time it takes her doing?

But it still makes me feel a little incompetent and weird.

But I'm also so so so grateful I can afford it even for my little studio apartment.

Recently, my friend that I don't have a lot of contact with these last few years told me that she thinks a medication she takes might be tending to leech nutrients out of her body which may contribute to her misery and general lack of ability to keep up contact or hobbies and stuff. On the other hand, I sometimes feel like that for as child-free as she is, she basically has just made choices that mean she's a pet-mom instead of a child-mom in such a way that she doesn't have time for friends anymore. I really do wish that she and I would be able to go back to what we once had, but I don't think it's going to happen, and I have to be okay with that, I guess.

France is supposed to happen in about a month. Gotta buy some traveler's health insurance. Anyone have a brand they're loyal to? I am an American national living in Japan going to France.

1. What is your biggest waste of time in your home?

Constantly trying to keep the hair off the floor. It gets everywhere and seems more neverending than it is on my head.

2. When at work, what is the activity that you find wastes the most time?

Attending to random new procedural things everyone forgets about a month later because decision by consensus without every explicitly stating the consensus is the stupidest Japanese thing I have yet discovered. Meetings that can be emails. Meetings that often are emails prior to the in-person meeting beacuse we have to sit there and be uncomfortable for an hour and a half every few weeks for morale.

3. When getting busy with a date or significant other, what ritual could you do without?

Not relevant to me, lol. I guess I sort of think kissing seems cooler in concept than the few times I've done it.

4. What is the biggest waste of time on the Internet?

Infinite scrolling.

5. What do you do at a restaurant to waste time when waiting for your meal?

Listen to YouTube talk about true crime or reddit stories. I do wish having people to eat with, ever.

Exhausted and looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow. Feeling generally okay about work and stuff but utterly worn out from it.

Felt a weird wave of nostalgia on the walk to my bus from work today.

My entire weekend was a blur, if not an entirely unpleasant one. On Friday, during a glance at my phone at work, I saw an ad for an exhibition of light art in Shinjuku-Chuo Park that was on through 5/31. Since I actually had a full weekend, and I hardly ever do anything out of the ordinary, I decided to go, even though going through Shinjuku Station makes me feel misanthropic, depressed, and enraged fro a bit nearly every time.

I keep thinking about how I know I don't want to be in Japan for the rest of my life but that I did so want to be back here for five years until I got back here... two years ago. Time is going by so quickly, and I feel like I shouldn't waste it. On the other hand, I am stuck doing everything I ever do alone, but the thought of cultivating a more active social life -- or a more active anything, really -- sounds like it might finish killing me.

The light thing was really cool.

I feel like that in a few years, I will probably look back on this time in my life with nostalgia. I would like to have certain things I did to even feel nostalgic for. So, I don't regret going to the thing, but I was one of the only people there who wasn't on the clock or whatever who was just... alone.

I talked to my dad a bit while seated in a place that wasn't obtrusive. Then, I went home and went to bed.

Saturday was chill, but I mostly did laundry and slept with a little bit of Genshin Impact co-op with my best friend.

I remember a time when I used to get on Genshin almost every single day, but I cannot figure out how I had the energy to do that. I guess it was because I was getting home at 5:00 or before back then.

On Sunday, I went to church, because I had kind of committed myself to trying to go to this Grief Small Group ting that started the week before. I didn't go the first week, even though I went to church, because I wasn't sure where it was meeting and was too shy and nervous to ask strangers even though I hung around and spoke to people for their Pentecost potluck thing they had.

I think the Grief Small Group was good for me, even if it added to the reasons I felt like I had barely had time at home, and my introvert battery was running on a half-charge from jump this week.

At the meeting, I spoke a little about why I had come there, and I immediately burst into tears. They were really sympathetic, and I got some support but also managed not to make everything about myself.

The thing is, I miss my mom, but my grief for her is more about the fact that even though I know I still love her and she loved me very much and even though I know there are other people who love me, there is very little tangible evidence anymore that anyone loves me back in the whole world. Like, I feel like I show up for people and grant grace and patience, but I don't have anyone to just... hide in anymore. No one who would come after me because I'm crying anymore. No one who will tolerate my being selfish for even a moment without it earning me silence.

Anyway.

As of this week, I've started catching the 7:04 bus again instead of the 6:44 bus. It's only a difference of 20 minutes, but it seems to add a significant amount to my true sleep time at night. Whatever was causing the serious delays in the mornings last year seems to have become less common. They're building some type of pedestrian overpass walkway thing right before one reaches the bridge into Tokyo, and I don't really know why this impacted morning traffic, but I wondered if it was involved somehow. They seem to be reaching a different stage of the project now, where it is much more obvious what they're doing.

My Death Note fic is getting steady engagement on AO3! Which is great and all I can hope for as a fan writer. However, I find that posting after I have written most of the fic makes the success and such feel a little bit more distant and surreal since the emotional investment of writing the thing was months ago.

Now, I'm getting to the point where I have to finish writing the very end of it, so maybe that will bring the immediacy back, but I just wish that there were a reliable way to post a finished WIP as an adult without prewriting most or all of the fic, because sometimes the back-and-forth is the magic. I dunno.

Anyway, I didn't even update the fic until just after midnight on Sunday-becoming-Monday, which is the latest update I've done. I've just been doing "one chapter per weekend" unless I feel like something different.

So I got through work yesterday still feeling totally drained and dead. I did hop on Genshin and manage to grind enough to just BARELY roll for Durin when I realized he was available when I did co-op with my best friend on Saturday.

This coming Saturday, I have to work, so I was pretty sure I was going to either randomly call in a day this week or leave early one day. The thing is, I take my work very seriously. I want to do a good job by the students, even if there's a lot of fluff I think is bullshit.

I have on-the-day called out once in the entire time I've worked there. And I feel like that's actually pretty unusual and remarkable given the fact that I feel called in to sub for people all the time. I was actually incredulous and amazed when there was a post in the substituting Slack channel that didn't tag me on Monday, which feels like a very strange mix of both "they notice how hard I'm working" and cynicism.

Anyway, turns out, I didn't have to fight with the mixture of "but I'll miss a class" guilt, because they decided to close the school tomorrow. It sounds like a lot of area schools are closing but being all like "but other schools won't close, we're being so overly cautious and kind!!!"

They're doing it as a "home study" day so it still counts as an instructional day, so we were allowed to not come in, but we had to use PTO / Flex Time Hours to actually do so. Luckily, tomorrow is my new-fangled half-day so I was able to use fewer hours than I would have otherwise.

I have never well-prepared for disaster here in Tokyo. I know most people have a go-bag and stuff, but I honestly think if it got that bad I would either have to find a random stranger to follow around or just hunker down and do my best. I don't really have anyone I would call on to drag myself to anymore, and I don't know how to even find out where to evacuate to.

But I think this situation is just going to be some nasty weather in the middle of the night and likely transit delays tomorrow that would've made having a normal school day a pain in the butt.

I talked to a couple of kids today in passing, and one told me about how he really wants to ride his bike through the puddles tomorrow after the rain is gone.

I went and got a big bottle of water and figure if I get the motivation I might fill some of my need-to-be-rinsed-and-stripped 16 oz bottles with water. I have a few soyjoy bars and such. Ready to microwave rice that could be eaten cold if things were dire. I don't think I would die if it were just a matter of waiting for power for a few days.

I really hope it doesn't come to that.

There's a sad, evil little part of my heart that doesn't even want to fight that hard if some disaster happened. I don't want to die, like at all. I just... get really tired of trying to survive (in a metaphorical way) when I feel like apart from my utility as a teacher, I wouldn't really be noticed-missing or whatever.

I tried to catch up on my Reading page a bit. I need to get a better attention span, just like everyone else. I did pop in on a few people's personal posts.

I have creative energy but not enough real energy to do anything.

Thankfully, tomorrow I finally get a rest day during which I have no particular reason to convince myself to go out of the house to do errands, chores, church, or anything else.

Pictures from Friday night under the cut.

( Read more... )

And here's a link to a video of a neat, musical light thing they had that I got a great angle to film despite there being people everywhere.

Saw this on my reading page and thought it looked cute and basic enough. No idea if I will just forget about it, but we'll try our best.

Bingo Card for whatif_au

High/Low Fantasy	Reversals	Espionage
Natural Disaster	WILD CARD	Fairy Tale
Dystopia	Movie/TV Fusions	Time Travel

"Deadline": July 31, 2026

When I was off for Golden Week, I was pretty bored and lonely. I have been trying to keep up with or catch up with my various interests that I share with my best friend(s), but it seems like every time I have significant time off that my friends are often really busy. Best friend was out of town for work and occupied during daytime hours without any phone breaks, so I had most of both my days and nights in sort of lonely peace and quiet. Other closest friend has also been really busy, because he recently moved within the same apartment building but to a two-bedroom unit in order to live with his friend and now-roommate who required a disability-accessible apartment. I think just the chaos of reorganizing his apartment and life plus adjusting to living with a roommate has made it so he doesn't have as much freedom or energy to talk as much. Time he would've spent socializing remotely with us is now spent socializing with his friend who's there in person.

I keep thinking about how society is built for in-person partnerships or families and how it just presumes heterosexual marriage for anyone to function in a way that isn't completely isolated. I have done what I can to combat this, but I also wish I could at least live with a friend someday. Don't know if that will ever happen, though, as I'm mostly at the mercy of various immigration laws.

Anyway, while I was off I made this post on a whim about how I am pretty new to being interested in Resident Evil after stepping so far out onto the thin ice of Leon Kennedy thirst memes that I got interested in at least consuming the media he was a part of...

I met someone through the shot in the dark RP ad, and for once, it seems to be going well. I haven't met an RP partner that lasted since my best friend, which was sixteenish years ago...

I also spent like $11 to buy this weird little miniseries that should've been a movie called "Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness". It's campy and done in an animation style very similar to the remake games with the new VAs for Leon and Claire in their roles.

When I started being invested just for Leon's sake, I really didn't know who to ship Leon with. I still feel like I can multiship, but I have accidentally fallen down the rabbit hole of shipping Claire and Leon.

Wow, a wild m/f pairing appears!

I am not entirely sure why I am so into it, but it has something to do with the fact that they are so connected on this very baseline human level that is primal but not (at the moment or inherently) sexual.

I feel like Leon keeps hitting on random people he meets because he's lonely and lost after getting black-bagged by the government, but then each and every time Leon and Claire see each other, they have this reaction like "Oh, it's you!" and it's so sweet.

The miniseries gave me a fan-service moment of Leon helping rescue Claire from acid and breaking metal and what-not where they grabbed hands, he pulled her back, and she fell on top of him. They make eye contact, he asks if she's okay, and then immediately gets distracted by the stuff going on in the room. And it's satisfying but in a way that actually frustrates my heart.

I took some quick and dirty screengrabs that I can do better than later:











My babies. Why am I like this?

But yeah, I dunno. Just something about the fact that they see each other as just people and that that in itself is a good thing because during the events of Resident Evil 2 that mattered so much.

And just passing ships in the night until it finally works.

At the end of the little series, Claire was angry with Leon because he refused to help her whiste-blow about some stuff for #reasons. And it stings, but I am also entranced.

The writing of this silly RE show was at least as good as, like, network attempts at prestige TV. Which is fucking weird. Like why?

I love it.

I updated my profile page, my fandom masterlist, and shipping masterlist. It had been a long time, and I wonder if I have missed something. I wonder if my pinned post also needs cleaning, but I think the last time I tried to make it less time-sensitive.

I keep thinking about how I would like to have more whimsical and fandom-specific things like... blog layouts, phone and computer wallpaper, but I feel like I have lost my sense of visual inspiration and I'm less willing to just steal stuff I find online.

Plus, I like stuff but I just feel like I have less brain space to store granular detail.

Hmm.

Work has been a little frustrating because being over in the more isolated building, I feel like my colleagues and I are being forgotten and left out of the loop and then treated as being at fault. It doesn't help that one coworker damn near refuses to put anything in writing. The whole "come find me" visit in the absence of being willing to accommodate that I have about a third again more steps to traverse in a day because of my situation.

But this year we're getting a half day "work from home" as well. Mine is on Wednesday morning starting tomorrow. It's kinda exciting in possibility but I'm too anxious to make full use of the evening. I guess I'll have a better sense of it next week. I'm most excited about it because I won't have to spend as much paid leave on my bi or tri monthly doctor's visits.

First few days back to work are always a slog of meetings mostly in Japanese. They've been doing a better job about projecting real time machine translation in addition to our few brave bilinguals trying to translate in a Google doc.

Today, Saturday, was for some fucking reason scheduled as a mandatory work day for which were getting a comp day next Monday, so even though nothing was scheduled we had to use PTO to take today off. After a little reluctance, I did.

I'll get granted my new bank of PTO days for the year soon.

Monday will also hopefully be just a peaceful admin work day. I hope.

I've still been having weird mood shifts that I can't quite identify the reason for. Transition and change are hard even when their content is neutral.

Haven't had as much luck being creative for the past few weeks. Felt an inkling of drive today but after some voice call socialization with my couple closest friends, I just feel like it's nap time. Tomorrow is Easter, and I would like to go to church. Wish I had a cute outfit but that would be too much effort unless I discover that something I have is cute.

I always get sick around Easter, and these past couple weeks I keep getting a phlegmy cough. Maybe this explains some of my mood issues too: fatigue from minor illness? I don't have official allergies.

Right now I feel pretty okay but wish I felt like making progress on games or creativity. I also just enjoy the quiet and peace to listen to documentaries or nothing at all and wrap up in blankets since I don't get actual human touch.

Written on mobile so not proofread. I can read what I'm writing, but these are letters for ants.