It’s not quite the New Year, but it’s close enough for resolutions.
Choosing whether or not to return to Japan for a third year teaching English was difficult for me. My apartment in Takaoka is a 30-minute drive + 14-hour flight + 2.5-hour train ride + 25-minute walk from my home outside Atlanta, Georgia. That means I’m relegating most of my closest friends and beloved family back to online-only status for another 396 days (assuming I head home immediately after my contract ends next year). I’m leaving my friends in their mid to late 20s, which means I’ll likely be missing engagements and bachelorette parties. I’m leaving some of my family members in questionable health, which could mean something that I don’t even want to consider. I’m missing the chance to spend two more Thanksgivings, another Christmas, another NYE, and another birthday with the people who mean the most to me.
It’s a big decision, and of course that begs people to ask, “What next?”
I don’t like that question for a few reasons. First, I don’t like it because I DON’T KNOW. An immature but sizeable part of my decision to return to Japan was, in fact, a deliberate effort to avoid this question. I don’t know what kind of job I want to search for, so I’ll keep teaching English. I don’t know if I want to move back to Atlanta, so I’ll keep living in my tiny bed-less condo. I don’t know if I can convince my boyfriend to learn English and quit his job and start a new life with me (seeing it typed out like that makes me think I already know the answer to that one), so I’ll keep studying Japanese and putting off whatever comes next.
Second, NO ONE KNOWS. If there’s anything we can take away from the pandemic of the last two years, it’s that nothing is set in stone. As an American, I hate to sit back and be a passenger in my own life, but sometimes there are things that you just can’t foresee or change. In Japan, everyone’s always saying shou ga nai. It can’t be helped. It used to be annoying back when I thought I had everything under control, but now, there’s comfort in it.
I’m sure upon reading this, there will be members of my family and close friends who start worrying about me. Please don’t. I’m owning up to the fact that I had doubts about coming back, but that doesn’t mean I have regrets. Had I chosen to stay in America, I would most certainly have had just as many doubts. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.” Shou ga nai.
Moving forward, to offset some of those doubts, I’m going to make this a year of self-improvement! My willpower is tied to how SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound) my goals are, so I’m outlining a few of them here.
I’m starting with my 14-day quarantine, which I am re-imagining as a Welcome Back to Japan Party with only one guest. How exciting is it that I get 2 weeks to work on any project I want with NO distractions? Wonderful. In preparation for my Japanese test on 12/5, I have scheduled 5 online lessons with my Japanese tutor and have a detailed study plan that has me finishing my textbook on 11/28. Physically, I’m setting a timer to ring every hour for 12 hours a day, so that I can do (alternating) push-ups & sit-ups and a 1-minute plank. As far as nutrition goes, I didn’t actually set a goal, but I chose my groceries very carefully during my trip to the supermarket yesterday.
Looking further to the future, I will be writing a blog post once a week. This doesn’t mean I will be writing quality posts, but you can expect to hear something from me every week. I know my history of updating this blog might lead some to say, “No way.” To those haters, please behold my 2016 music blog: A Series of Tones. I did a blog post EVERYDAY. I think I can manage a weekly schedule, if I give myself permission to create poorly-written posts about unimportant events.
Next, I will be reading one book a month. Upon my return to America, I spoke with a lot of my brightest friends and clever family members, and I noticed that the difference between the vocabulary they were using and the vocabulary I was using was miles apart. I’m not sure if this is because I’m used to speaking very simple English at my job for 9 hours a day or if it’s because a good chunk of my daily life is now in a different language or because I stopped reading books. In an case, getting back into reading can’t hurt. To hold myself accountable for this one, I’ve joined a book club. This month’s read is Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, if anyone wants to follow along.
The project I haven’t managed to get a good outline for is “entering the metaverse.” It’s broad and confusing and I’m going to have to jump in with both feet. For now, the goal is to spend at least 30 minutes a day reading articles or tweets about what in the world is going on with that.
My alarm is ringing for me to do more pushups, so I’ll finish with this: At the end of the day, I’m happy to be where I am and excited to see what the future holds.
Love,
Alisa
Alisa & a Visa 