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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.

For those who were wondering, giving the news to my boss via email turned out to go pretty well.

Saturday evening, I attended a Christmas concert put on by my boss's church, and I saw her after. She acknowledged receiving my email and agreed it was a good move for my overall career. Seems she's not interested in burning bridges via passive aggression. And, like, I guess I didn't expect she'd be awful about it but I feared it was in the realm of possibility?

So yeah, I'm sorta floppy from relief.

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... )

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.

Today was a surprisingly nice day for me. I wanted to write some, which didn't really happen because I got sidetracked by making icons and listening to music after I did some responsible things.

Still, I have often spent Saturdays just completely zonked, so it was nice to feel like I actually get a 1.5-2 day weekend instead of 1 plus a bunch of sleep and desperate chores.

I had another job interview on Thursday morning. I really, really hope that God and circumstance place me where I need to be to make this living in Japan but occasionally visiting home thing socially, practically, and financially viable. Some days, I feel like an idiot for coming here, even though my material conditions are objectively better. Still, the yen being so weak to the dollar fucking hurts when I'm trying to play catch-up with money. One more month and I might finally start saving a tiny bit. Right now, I'm just scraping by except allowing myself to eat pretty much what I want, when I want, and throwing money at my credit card.

If it doesn't turn out that I get one of the international school jobs I'm diligently working toward getting, I guess I will also open my eyes back homeward and come from a position of having a little more bargaining power with what I have to do versus what I'm willing to take. Especially after the election is done, if we aren't headed toward Project 2025 Gilead, then I'll be more willing to consider working back home, I guess.

One of the main reasons I left was because I was so, so exhausted of just renting a room in someone else's house and never having say over the fucking thermostat. I would spend months of the year with pounding temples and a brain muddled into soup because people were trying to save money on air conditioning. I will make other sacrifices to just be able to think. I read somewhere recently that the best ambient indoor temperature for physical and cognitive function is somewhere around 22C give or take. Most people in America, at least in my neck of the woods, keep their summertime thermostats anywhere between 68 and 74 with most people choosing somewhere between 70 and 72 as a reasonable setting. Of course, this is on central air heating pumps, and I recognize that a lot of the rest of the world also doesn't use these and instead uses the in-wall units like here in Japan. That said, I think using Celsius fucks with people's brains as to what the hell a reasonable temperature to achieve overall with air conditioning to make people function well is. My boss keeps it on 27 or 28 a lot of the time. Sometimes she'll lower it to 25 in the classrooms, which is bearable if the outside temperature is high enough to keep it flowing most of the time. But I guess it is a difference of philosophy between keeping a room and workplace endurable versus comfortable enough for good work. I understand that some people are worried about the environmental ramifications of air conditioning, and I think we should look into some of the ancient and natural ways of helping to cool buildings, but until architecture catches up, I am extremely heat sensitive and actually feel my seasonal depression period during the summer because of this. (A link of some of the data, though I don't think this is initially where I read it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6377698/)

I feel like I lost the plot in the previous paragraph but to clarify: my previous landlord before moving here was from Ukraine and therefore a native Celsius user, and so she did similar bullshit with her Fahrenheit thermostat. Eventually, I gained a little bit more leeway with being allowed to turn the air conditioning down to MAYBE 74 on very hot days, but I mostly spent August-early October and March onward in that house stripping down to my underwear the moment I got home from work and staying that way until I had to get ready for work the next day, sweating to death when I would try to sleep no matter what I did.

And just that feeling of a lack of control drove me crazy. Like, I couldn't even choose to pay more to be comfortable in my "home" for months on end.

At least here in Japan, I can choose to have my electric bill be high in the summer and just suffer through some of the cooler months to make it balance out. I even enjoy coping with cold with layers.

However, long term, my eikawa salary isn't sustainable.

My current contract is for two years, and I think my boss would love to have me for the two years plus the other my visa is active. However, I do not want to do that. She's a good person but not a great boss, and I don't really like living in this level of suburbia in Japan. I want to be closer into Tokyo and other expats and more choices for stuff to do without having to get a hotel for the night if I'm gonna stay here.

That said, I've been feeling a little less dire about the thought of having to go back to the US provided Project 2025 isn't the governmental philosophy. If we get to live in a world where that isn't happening, which I hope and pray is the case, then I would be able to look for a job back in my hometown/region at some leisure while keeping this job as long as I need to within the next couple of years, if my dreams of a better job here don't pan out.

I've also been thinking about what the hell I would like to do if I needed to pivot out of teaching.

Lord knows I don't know what it takes to be a consistent content creator for a living, no matter how much that seems like The Dream at times.

I also see people pivoting from being teachers to going into corporate training. I would have to learn more, but I don't think that's for me long term, even though I don't think I would hate it.

There's also instructional design, but one thing I hate as a teacher is clueless curriculum design. So, if I were to do that, I would still want a few more years in the classroom to feel at all qualified.

Finally, there is the ever-allure of "going back to school" for me, since I feel safer as a student than as a worker in ways.

If I did that, even though I don't fucking want more student debt, I have been considering that the parts of my current job I enjoy the most mirror some things speech language pathologists do. That's sort of in this sweet spot between education and medicine in such a way that it might pay a bit more and have a few more options for employment than English teacher back in the US. So, that's becoming a little floaty and shiny backup backup plan in my head.

Today, I went to the grocery store and got some stuff to cook up a very large amount of chicken I ordered from The Meat Guy months ago and thawed in the fridge. I made lemon chicken and it was surprisingly non disastrous. While I was near it, I also went to Daiso. I bought a few cheap kitchen implements to help in my cooking endeavor, and I also bought a pad of paper and masking tape.

It is handy to have, but I also want to make a little sign to put on my front door that says in English (and if I can find the right translation in Japanese - I know a couple of you speak Japanese so if you could help? Or I'll just ask Google) that delivery drivers can fucking just LEAVE THINGS AT THE DOOR.

Many Amazon drivers get it, as I have it set in my preferences, but sometimes even they chicken out of doing it. Let alone Yamato or other delivery drivers. Sometimes they try to call me, but I almost never hear it, because I am at work or asleep at various times that aren't convenient for delivery, and I can't have that level of conversation in Japanese yet anyway.

Just leave the box!!!

Anyway, while I was grabbing things at Daiso, I enjoyed looking around a little bit at affordable and cute decorative items they have. However, I didn't buy anything.

And I've been like that for months. Years now, actually. For the most part, I don't buy anything that takes up physical space or has any weight whatsoever or anything that is decorative, because as I have moved several times, I have become very aware of the fact that if I own it, I either have to take it with me or throw it away. I feel guilty about creating more trash in the world, and I just... don't feel like I have the heart to make a place to lay my head more homey in less practical ways because I know that I'm still not in my landing place yet.

I envy my peers who have that, but overall looking around and feeling safe in my nice and cold apartment (since I've been able to switch off the air conditioning and over to the dehumidifier) was nice today.

I had a strangely good day in terms of unexpected events.

I awakened to find an email from Dreamwidth Studios that I had been randomly selected to receive a donated Paid Account for a year! That's great, because I have been using the website more often lately. I've been trying to be more present with... well, anything, and it seems to help to be on these more Internet 1.5 websites... I had a paid account for a few years now, but right now anything other than food or something that will have a direct impact on my material existence seems like a stupid frivolity. I had planned to purchase a paid account again, but I just... hadn't made myself. I'm really thankful, kind strangers on Dreamwidth! I almost never win random odds ANYTHING, so it's really nice.

Then, when I got to work, I received an email to request a direct interview with an international school in another part of Tokyo! This application is really satisfying to get a response to, because I had to pay a platform to be allowed to put in yet another application... So, here's hoping that I might get it. It would be a significant pay bump, and I would just enjoy the work as much or more than anything I've ever done, I think. I'll be interviewing with them next week.

Finally, I was scheduled to have 10 classes today. It's manageable but hectic. However, I ended up with only 6 due to several absences. It was nice. Very breezy and let me get lesson plans done through next Tuesday which means that for the last two days this week, I can dedicate office time to curriculum adoption instead of lesson planning, if my boss doesn't give me something else to do.

When I started in June and for the first couple months, Mondays were trial by fire for everyone. In the 5:00 PM slot, there's this group of five very difficult to manage elementary school boys that, every time I think I'm getting some cooperation, it's two steps forward and one step back. At least one step back. This past Monday was Respect for the Elderly Day in Japan, so it's a public holiday for most things. Our schedule doesn't take into account public holidays and has separate holidays instead, so my boss invited the boys' parents to come see their behavior. A few showed up but mostly stayed outside the room and talked with my boss. They observed for a little while. It was chaotic but not terrible chaotic. We'll see if any of the progress sticks next Monday...

Anyway, until a couple weeks ago, there were 11 classes on Mondays, the most I had all week, and it included 2 of about 3 classes that have members who ever give me a really difficult or disrespectful time. Some Mondays, I would come out of it feeling really emotionally battered by a couple of 8 or 9 year old boys! It was awful.

Recently, however, there have been some schedule shifts. This means there will usually be only 8-10 classes on Monday, still getting a good chunk of the difficult stuff over with at the beginning of the week, but with a couple of more cooperative students moved to different days of the week. Now, Tuesday or Wednesday will be the technically busiest day usually, but those include both more one-on-one classes and more mature students, whether they be elementary school kids or older kids and adults. It's more balanced, and I'm grateful for that.

Plus, I think that will be better for whoever replaces me, in the end.

Right now, I think I am doing a good job most days. My boss offers genuine thanks and praise sometimes. However, I am still having problems with her anxiety cloud casting this dreadful glow over me.

I work 1:30 PM to 9:00 or so most days. Technically, my hours are until 9:30, but if my boss has decided we're done for the day, we leave a bit before that. She's eager to go home, and I think she basically schedules that buffer for if something went wrong? But anyway, I am supposed to have an hour break in there. It's actually required by law. However, my break is usually broken up into two half-hour chunks. However, what's actually happening is that most of the time I'm not actually getting a break that long during any time period. If I get a half hour break, I'm usually doing paperwork to make stuff easier for the next day for at least 20 minutes of that break. It's somewhat a choice, but it's one of those things where I'm always trying to keep on top of things such that my job feels more steady instead of boom and bust.

However, my boss is this anxious church mouse who is obviously a bit nervous and judgmental anytime I'm sitting there doing nothing or on my phone or whatever. Even though I'm doing volumes of work that are sometimes working ahead into the next week.

It frustrates me, but I'm also trying to get brave enough that at a certain point, when it's officially my break time, I will just sit there and read my phone right in front of her no matter what it does to her aura.

I hate the nitpicky supervision, though it isn't constant. I put up with so much crap. Like, her four year old grandson is there pretty often because she helps out when her daughter and son-in-law need a pinch-hit for looking after him. I don't mind! I find him somewhat charming. But yesterday, some of their other family members were there for a little bit, and he ran into the office where I was working, came up to me, kicked me in the thigh (medium pressure, non injurious but not very comfortable either) and ran off again. I didn't say a word about it. I think he was being playful/giving me attention in his own way. He sometimes comes up and tickles me and it's, like, obviously friendly. This was less easy to read, but I think it was still that kind of thing. That said, if I have to sometimes (not at that moment) impromptu babysit, and you ask forgiveness and not permission while you stop looking after your grandson and just leave him in my general vicinity, then you can fuck off about whether or not you like my smartphone habits.

Anyway, I'm venting. It's not a terrible job. She's not a terrible person. But sometimes, she's a crappy boss.

Two or three friends have suggested that these "behaviors" are why other people in my position have left before. It could be. I wish I could find out what exactly were the tenures of my predecessors...

Anyway, I am currently looking not just out of resentment. There have been days when I have the slightly petty thought of, like, "the smaller you make the bullseye to make you happy, the further my foot is out the door and you don't even know it yet." On other days, I feel kind of bad that I will leave her given the opportunity before a year is up. My contract says I can voluntarily retire with 90 days notice, and I will do it if the opportunity comes up.

I dread what might happen next with regard to my comfort levels in my own home, since my rent is played through my work as is common in these situations, but I will get through it by the grace of God. This woman claims to be a Christian. Let her show it.

Earlier, I opened instagram and happened across a reel by the "antiworkgirlboss" account where she was talking about "Performance Improvement Plans," which are typically used as a way for a job that has to give reasons to fire you to start the process of firing you. I don't think my job is anywhere near that point. I think she likes me most of the time. I think I'm doing a good job most of the time. However, one thing this reel said really resonated with me. Basically, when you've been given forewarning that a job is about to end, you need to start looking for another and emotionally disassociate from your current job.

I definitely get emotionally wrapped up in my jobs. I think most teachers do. I still, every day, go in wanting the best outcomes for students.

And, for example, my boss currently has me learning about a different curriculum to phase into using over the next several level changes for sme students.

I'm doing it. I'm learning a skill. And I'm also writing up a doc and sharing it with her, which I'll make a copy of after I'm doing and unattach my version wen I leave the job. I am consciously doing things that will make it easier for whoever she has to train next. But, it's going to be someone if I am blessed with the opportunity to take a job where I am in my skillset and being treated with the level of professional dignity I have earned.

She gives me some professional dignity and treats me well especially when I'm working with the age group I'm licensed to teach. However, working with the younger kids is a challenge for me. I'm learning, but I don't want to feel looked down upon for not being a perfect natural mother who speaks Japanese all the time. I know some of it is my rejection sensitivity, too.

Still, I think it's even a responsible thing to try and move into a position where I am best utilizing my skill set.

And, now that I have written all that down... I'm trying to let it go until tomorrow.

I'm still having a lot of trouble letting my work live at work. Not making it my whole personality, even when I am compartmentalizing it.

I've been wanting to write more lately. You might have noticed with the bingo card. I also signed up for a ficathon. The two might overlap. But I am also worried about whether or not I can even focus on any of them.

I can't decide if I want to work on WIPs in fandoms I've been in for a while or if I want to start new things, one-shots or potential WIPs. I want to make myself happy with writing, but I am human and also want community and attention, and the latter is really, really hard to come by as a writer these days.

So, Monday and Tuesday as work days actually went super smoothly for me. Tuesday was super easy, too, because two of my students were absent.

My usual work hours are 1:30 PM to 9:00ish. Technically 9:30, but it's basically when everything is wrapped up and my boss says goodnight to me, and it's usually a bit earlier than that.

My boss, being Japanese, seems to come to work for like 10-14 hours a day. Therefore, it feels like no matter what I do, even though she's generally kind, there's this idea that I have an absurdly easy schedule.

I am venting, because overall my boss is a genuinely kind person. I can tell that she has the good of all in her heart as much as possible. However, she is a deeply anxious person, as mentioned in a previous post.

So here's the bullet points version of what happened:

i left my house key at work

i have a work key

work has a security system

i sent [boss] a text asking her for any further information about disarming the security system. honestly, it looked very simple and it should've been explained to me before, but [boss[ seemed to think i would only ever need to get in after she had been there during the day because she gets there at like 7am and leaves at 9:00pm or whatever.

i try to explain through text message twice what the situation was

[boss], being a person to freak out about everything, hops in her fucking car and drives almost back to work to let me in

i tell her i have a key i just need instructions

she sees this message and thinks it means i found my key

she asked me to never do that again but she was glad i had my key and i apologized a couple of times and she seemed to accept and wish me good night whatever

but because she still didn't understand what i needed, i had to go in with the key, set off the security system, couldn't figrue out how to disarm it, so i had to explain to the security system people and the police what happened. they were all super nice and everything is fine now but i'm stressed out that she's gonna be pissed tomorrow if she finds out i set it off
even though it's entirely because she couldn't fucking tell me basically a two step process
i talked to my dad about it a bit
i feel a bit better
but i just
siiiigh
i've only ever slightly fucked up twice ever and this is the second time so i think i'm fine but
this is partly on her
don't give someone a key they can't use
she did say she'd show me how to disarm it tomorrow
but again
totally misundestood the situation despite me being very clear

from me venting it to my best friend because I am trying not to dwell and type all this shit again over and over.

Hopefully, my tiny piece of cheesecake and a note of "sorry for waking you up unnecessarily" will let it blow over. However, if it comes to her attention that I set off the fucking security alarm and it annoys her, I think I might lose my mind inside. I will probably outwardly just become weak and meek like always, but ultimately, this is kind of her fault at least as much as it is mine.

If someone entrusts me with a key, I should be able to rely on being able to use it in some crazy circumstance without having to call the police!

She did say she would explain how to arm/disarm the thing for future reference.

I just fucking hate how her response was to jump out of bed and start driving instead of... like... calling or texting me?

Anyway, I talked to my dad and my two best friends. Mentioned it to my one Japanese friend. I feel a tiny bit better now. I'm just trying to steel myself without obsessing and spiraling.

I just really need to develop the boundary of being able to treat this just as a job instead of the locus of my self-worth. I care about my job and want to do a good job, but my rejection sensitivity is SO high that if she's annoyed I lose it a little. And that in itself is a bit of a negative power dynamic that I do not believe she in any way exploits on purpose but which deepens the boss/subordinate divide anytime there's even a mild hiccup.

Another thing I did to make myself feel better was put in three job applications. One I would love to hear back from and two on a lark.

I don't plan to leave immediately. I plan to give her a 90 day notice, as it says in my contract I should for voluntary retirement, and hopefully even more if I can. I also plan to give her a full year out of me, if at all possible with any job to get me out of Podunk, Japan, but I really, really need to be somewhere I can get on a train and just... ride.