Reflection

Dec. 28th, 2024 11:59 pm
prixmium: (Default)
I’m on vacation now, and having the kind of job I do this year, I don’t have grading or anything to worry about, but my break is a little shorter than it would have been in my public school job.

I’m trying my best to focus on every moment being present with my best friend and away from the things that cause me to feel kind of mopey about my everyday life back in Japan. Plus, when I go back, I’ll only have 10 or 11 weeks left on the job I’m leaving.

In the meantime, I’ll have to secure an apartment for my next job, but even though being a teacher in a school again will be a lot of responsibility, it’s more focused responsibility, so I feel like it will be better for me. Plus, I’m only planning to be there for a year, if my other plans go in order.

It’s hard not to focus on the anxiety of going back to responsibility instead of being where I am, happy. I guess another thing is that I have real hope of my regular life being better in the next 18 months or so, so it’s hard to wait for that long and to imagine it stretching out before me.

However, I am happy that if I just actually manage to ignore my job for the next week or so, nothing bad will happen to me or my students as a result. I just really don’t have quite as much stamina for a teaching job as many do, and it’s the one drawback of my chosen profession, no matter what form it takes.

I’m really happy to be in a part of the world that’s more familiar and which speaks my language, even though I enjoy being in Japan. I came to Japan in order to have a chance at a better living situation than the one I was able to afford in America, despite making a higher salary, but now that I have worked out a game plan to have a life where I can be near my best friend most of the time, I feel it is frustrating and not quite enough. On the other hand, the conversation that led to me actually coming up with this plan and finding out more than I knew before probably wouldn’t have happened if not for the confluence of circumstances and my homesickness and discontent when I first moved. And, I’ve gotten in better shape – losing a little weight but, more importantly, getting my diabetes under much better control. So, it feels like a “meant to be” kind of side quest, but I wish it wouldn’t take so long, but I’m old enough that I don’t want to wish my time away.

Just thinking some thoughts as I try not to waste my time off as I often do, fretting.
prixmium: stonehenge in sunlight (stonehenge in sunlight)
I spent so much time dreading this Sunday through the week.

Weeks ago, my boss kind of voluntold/sprung a trap to get me to volunteer at the local "World Festival," two weeks after the "Autumn Festival." Basically, it was a more westernized version of a fall festival with Halloween decorations and invitations for foods that were more global in nature. There were still some Japanese foods, but there was an Afghani food and some Latino food. Most of the morning and early afternoon, I was helping kids help themselves to cotton candy from a cotton candy maker machine. I was also taking orders from people in English, sometimes, since it was basically a joint effort between boss's friend who runs a restaurant and our English school to self-promote.

It was enjoyable honestly, but I'm also gonna try to make up excuses forever if she ever asks me if I'm doing anything on X day again. I hate that method of asking someone to do something! But I have gotten to spend some time around a woman who's also in her 30s and it's been really nice. She's the daughter of my boss's friend who quit taking lessons with me because I talked too much lol. (Casually and nonmaliciously xenophobic old lady with too much to do.)

Anyway, last time I posted, I had just finished with the Autumn festival social obligation, and I was getting ready to get up early to go to Tokyo either way. I had to attend Oxford University Press curriculum training. That morning, I was supposed to try and go to the international school with which I advanced in the interview process, but I was so drained and a little headachey/migraine-y, so I sent an email begging off the obligation. So, I was able to hoof it to the train and get to Tokyo a BIT later and go to the thing.

Again, there are parts of this stuff I enjoy, but I hate the voluntoldness of it.

I'm trying to just roll with things, but I have decision paralysis really badly if I have an unexpected, specifically timed appointment ever.

I decided earlier in the week to reach back out to the school and send them the video taped sample lesson they asked for. I had almost decided to email them and profusely thank them but say no thank you. I'd been looking at this school for a couple of years off and on, but I think I want to go back to North America and work on trying to go be roommates with my best friend in the next few years.

However, she pointed out that I ought to think about keeping the Japan option open in the between-time, especially if the US election goes to Trump. I pray through agony that he'll lose and lose solidly, but I am terrified of him winning. My decision to come here, in thinking back, was in assuming Trump would win against Biden this time. Kamala has managed to assuage those fears somewhat, but the battleground states are so close and bad...

So, I decided to do the sample lesson, and so I had to rush home this afternoon and do a group interview. Honestly, again, all of this was fun and nice. But I just hate routine interruption. Undiagnosed neurodivergent something or other doesn't want to be asked to mask for any more time than is absolutely necessary!!!

But now I'm free, and I'm either going to schedule an IELTS test and dinner date with myself this coming weekend or do nothing at all.
prixmium: (Default)
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.
prixmium: (Default)
A week from Sunday, I have a hellishly long day ahead of me. I have to get to Tokyo very early in the morning to do a tour of a school and do a second interview.

I've had a lot of thinking and crying and talking to my dad and talking to a few of my friends. I've thrashed around, feeling sorry for myself about ruining my life and having no hope.

I know I don't have the option of actually quitting life, though. There are people and things I love here.

I've been grappling with whether or not I want to keep teaching.

I love teaching, but the emotional investment with no support system backing me up and refilling my emotional cup as it were makes it really hard to keep going.

My best friend is also having some issues about not having any in-person support system.

Today, we finally had a conversation about realistically looking into whether I can somehow, legally, join her in Canada. Canada is a lot harder for me to just up and go to than Japan, I think, but maybe I can qualify to get started there either as a teacher or as a student again.

I would be really happy if that turns out to be a viable solution, though I'm scared to get my hopes up. I am talking to an immigration lawyer again later this week, though.

March 2025

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