Letters from Japan, pt. 3

BLOG POST 3 (November 5/6th, plane ride back)

It is either 7:01 am or 10:01 pm, depending if we’re talking about where I’m arriving or where I’m coming from. I’m on the plane back. There is so much I could talk about, too much really. I’ll try and capture as much as I can as soon as I can, but before I do that, I want to get started on some other items. It feels like the beginning of another chapter. A work and dharma chapter. Though actually, it doesn’t feel like that is really going to start for another few weeks, as we’re about to buy our house, so that’s going to be a large amount of what’s happening when we get back. More moving, along with finance stuff, the actual buying, and getting the house fixed up and ready to move into. And maybe getting the house we’re moving out of ready for a renter. It was a good long time in Japan, I’m ready to come back and get to work. I’m excited about it really. I think I took way too many pictures, I made a bunch of work for myself now, as I have to go through them and delete all but the best, or one representative one, for the various things we’ve done.

You’ll have to excuse me as I end this post quickly, as I’m eager to get on to the journaling and planning for what is to come, when I have spare time aside from house and moving logistics, and more so once that quiets down.

Letters from Japan, pt. 2

BLOG POST 2 (Same day as previous post, October 16th)

I’m writing this on the plane, still, on a simple Mac wordpad program, because no wifi. Some of the views have also been awesome on the plane. The window itself is really cool. It’s nice and big and instead of a blind you can pull down, there is a button below the window that you can press, to… I think polarize the window to lesser or greater degrees? Not a hundred percent sure, but it goes from normal window, to window wearing very light sunglasses, all the way down to super dark sunglasses. Oh, and the movie screen has a privacy… something on it, so you can’t see your neighbors screen well. No one judging what you’re watching I guess?

Anyhoo, we passed over some beautiful mountain ranges in Wyoming, and a crazy blue lake, when I checked the flight map we got the part it was near….Grand Teton national park. I’m partially writing these here because as we looked out, I said we should visit the park. Then said it again, when we were passing over… I think it was Vancouver island. Beautiful mountains and sea.

Letters from Japan, pt. 1

October… either 15th, or 16th, depending on what time zone we’re talking about. It’s probably… well, we left around 11:30, and then we just kept flying with the Sun, so it’s kind of just staying around noon, and it will be a bit after noon when we arrive. Trippy. I guess whenever we pass the international date line… Right now we’re up around the arctic.

It’s been a crazy week! Crazy in a good way, but a flurry of activity, preparing for this very trip that we are now on. The Japanese airplane is amazing. It’s spacious, there is a large screen for each passenger, and a lot of legroom, and the bathrooms are spacious and clean and have a slow close toilet so it doesn’t slam down with a loud noise when you shut it, and if I read the signs correctly it actually has a bidet installed, which Suzannah confirmed. And often when I go, someone has re-folded the toilet paper ends into chevrons to look tidy. And it has a no-touch flush button, as does the sink. Also, the meal was delicious, though a bit light, and all the plane staff are super friendly and courteous.

I’ve been a fan of much of the Japanese culture that’s been imported to America, but so far it seems that the actual Japanese culture is even more appealing to me than I at first thought. There is a little bit of a down side, in that from what I heard they are sticklers for rules, so you’re unlikely to be able to talk to someone at a service counter or something into making an exception for you. It seems kind of intense. But the rest of it seems quite lovely. I suppose I should not start making proclamations about it on the plane ride over. But so far, just the plane ride has been great.

Aside from the headache and nausea. But I get a headache pretty much every time I get on a plane. Especially when it’s a longer flight. I wish I knew what caused it. The mild nausea is new, I wonder if it’s related to the headache, the airport food I had before getting on the plane, or something else. Just another symptom of too much flying.

I watched Spiderman far from home which was great, and Dr. Strange and the multiverses of madness, which was awful. It was fairly well done, but there was just so much murder. Someone just wanted to kill all our favorite heroes and wrote a multiverse script to make it happen. It had kind of a horror movie vibe. So much less interesting character interactions than the spider man movie, so much more about spectacle. It was good spectacle, interesting ideas, fun to see super heroes that get less time, but not fun to see them gruesomely killed.

I’m not really a fan of smash boom spectacle even when it’s not gruesome. I suspect the headache and nausea didn’t help its case.

OK, that’s probably enough for one week, I think I owe two at this point though. So I’ll write the next one as well.

Irony, Shame, and Self-compassion

 Wow. It's been a really long time since I posted. Over a month. Which means more like two months, given the Japan trip.

Good news about habits: if you have genuinely established a habit, it won't just die if you somehow get off the habit. The pathways (good or bad) are grooved into your brain, and that means that when/if you decide to pick it back up, the habit will return relatively easily. So, that's what I'm hoping will happen with this.

It's interesting and at first glace a bit ironic (never sure if I'm using that word correctly without checking.) that upon returning and having more time than every before, I'm less on top of things than I've been in a long while. I wonder why that is? Obviously, part of it is that I totally disrupted all my patterns and habits while on the trip, so its taking time to return to them.

A more subtle part seems to be what might be called "letting off steam." I've been so tightly wound for so long, that I'm just kinda taking it easy, enjoying my freedom, having fun.

Another part is something I've recognized for a long time, which is the tendency to not do much, when faced with an unstructured life without many rigorous, time sensitive goals. Or, even if there are good, specific, challenging goals, not having any external accountability.

I had thought that I was at a point where I wouldn't have to worry about this, but I think rather I'm at a point where I can handle and overcome it using my intelligence and the various tools I've learned, along with my improved self-confidence and self-kindness. However, that is not an instant fix, but rather a process of trial, reflection, and improvement. For instance, it strikes me that it might be useful to set up a method for social accountability to my goals. Perhaps via a twitter account where I post what I'm planning on getting done that day or something. We will see. Not yet sure how necessary it is, but it highlights why most people are happier with a job rather than unemployed, even without financial worries. (As long as the job is at least neutral, and probably even if it's slightly bad.)

Suzannah is away for the week, and I think just having another person in the house adds a level of social accountability, at least short term, as I was really playing around for the first few days of that. However, after two or three days, the euphoria of 'vacation' has worn off and I'm ready to get back to work. Though I was getting work done those past days as well. Cooking and cleaning and various time sensitive tasks. But not much of the longer-term important stuff, and my schedule has been way off. 

I think one of the biggest differences from previous times in my life, thought it's been growing for several years now, is just my self compassion and kindness. Being kind and respectful with myself, even when I'm doing stuff I maybe shouldn't be, is the best thing I've ever done, for reducing that kind of behaviour.

It's fascinating: shame about your actions is apparently the most powerful force in keeping you doing those actions. At least it apparently was, for me. I genuinely wanted to change though, so perhaps there are other more important factors for other people.

In any case, the cycle seems to go like this: Do fun stuff that you think you shouldn't be doing->feel ashamed about it->do more distracting stuff, to try and distract yourself from the shame.

Versus the new cycle: Do fun stuff->realize you should stop and do other stuff->do the other stuff

Now, if something seems like an actual issue, I can take action to fix it-in the past I've set up a screen time limit on my own computer to very positive results- but most of what I'm doing is, say, playing a fun video game, or listening to an audio book while I do chores or go for a walk, perhaps for longer than I should. Maybe staying up a bit late listening to it. This is not cataclysmic. Maybe I'd like to reduce my time spent on these things and/or or when I do them. But I've been equating it to eating too many sweets: yes, it's not good for me, and I should endeavour to change that habit. But no, it's not a sign of moral decrepitude and being an awful person. Just an unhealthy habit to change. And while I'm eating them, I might as well enjoy the process rather than be tormented about it.

And, coming from the other side, when taking a bad habit away, it's important to have good habits to replace them with, and often, the best way to do that is to crowd out the bad habits with good habits. Rather than focusing on trying to repress my impulses with all my might, only to build up pressure and eventually explode, better to focus on positive things I like to do, and get back to them as soon as I can.

In any case, those are my current thoughts. I'm going on a short journey next week, and I've got a couple of blog posts I wrote while in Japan, that I need to post, so that's what's coming up next.

Love yourself, be well,

-Isaac

Too much Stuff. Goal! The root of all (evil) shopping.

 One more thing, that I will separate into its own post, so I can call myself caught up on posts 😄

In an attempt to make sure I'm prepared for the trip, I've been doing a bunch of shopping. Some things I'm getting will make a big difference in comfort level for the trip. Some will make a small difference, and some are just things I've had on my list of "things to get someday" that I thought, well, I'm doing my shopping now anyways, lets just do this one as well.

However, somewhere along the line, I reached saturation levels, and then went beyond them. Like eating to much, to much consumerism, to much stuff, leads to feeling sick. Like a stomach ache for the soul. I'm reminded of an interesting scientific finding that I recently read about, that people who consciously choose to be ascetic, that is, very minimal in their possessions, tend to have higher levels of happiness and satisfaction with life. I can viscerally feel the truth of that. In addition to how much of my precious time it takes up. Not just the shopping, but the having, the sorting and putting away, the checking to make sure they work, the returning when they don't work. It's a lot of time, and that is time I'm not spending doing actually important things. Stuff is just, at best, a support for doing the things that actually matter to you. When they take up the time that you would be spending doing those actually important things, they are a net negative.

It's tricky to figure out where that line is. It is a bit of a intermittent reward scheme, in that sometimes you find something that works just right and you are really glad to have it. But many times, it's stuff you don't actually want, or never really use.

Perhaps this is just the same reaction of someone who's OD'ed on dessert over the holiday season and swears off sugar and overeating ever again, only to be back at it the next month, or week. But I am feeling a strong desire to seriously downsize. Moving is the perfect time to do it, since I'm not on a strict timeline, and not yet being employed is also the perfect time to do it, as it can take a lot of time to sort through all the stuff that's been accumulated.

All that said, there is still a thing or two I should probably get, though it's been nice to take a break from that to clean up the house, go through mail, send some time sensitive correspondence, and generally do other things that need to get done. One of the problems is, this is such short notice, that if I do want to get something, I need to do it now, in case it takes a while to ship to me. Having shoes that are comfortable for large amounts of walking is a definite plus for my kind of vacation, for example. On the other hand, I have shoes that are probably sufficient, if not great. Is it worth it to spend my time looking? Is it worth it to spend my time researching if there even is anything like what I want (I'm hard to find shoes for, since I like zero drop and flexible souls that let me feel the ground.) I'm leaning strongly towards 'no' and that feels like a relife, so it's probably correct.

Here's an interesting thing I noticed as I inquired into what was the deal with all the shopping I do: there's a fundamental sense of not being enough, that manifests in a specific way, that makes me want to make sure I'm 'prepared.' If I can just accept the fact that there is nobody I need to 'be' and I'm ok just as I am, reality is ok just as it is, then the compulsion fades and I'm left with contentment and appreciation for the moment.

Let's take that and stick it in my new soon to be flux-updated character sheet. (Gamer reference. Your 'character sheet' is a piece of paper (or a digital spreadsheet or such) that lists all your strengths, weaknesses, character traits, skills, and such.)

Alright! I'm caught up. Goooooal! as they say in soccer.

See you next time,

with gratitude, enjoyment and enthusiasm.

-Isaac

More stuff going on! Mentorship, Goals, and Consciously becoming who you want to be.

 Ah yes, I forgot to mention two other things, one, apparently it's much easier to re-write elements of our personalities and personal narratives, when we are in a state of flux, which happens when we have big life changes, like moving somewhere new, starting a new job or school, etc.

I'm about to have two of those, one really big one that is temporary, Japan, and another less extreme one that will be long term, moving into a new house. I'm planning on taking some of my time now, to think about what I might like to change about myself. Which leads me into my second point, in a few days I'm going to meet with someone who is very successful, teaching older kids in a way that is adjacent to what I think I'd like to be doing. He's going to be mentoring me. At least in the short run, with long run being determined by how that goes. One of the things he said, after responding that I could prepare by thinking about goals I'd like for near and distant time horizons, was that he was going to help me figure out the person I needed to become, to achieve those goals.

This is maybe a bit of an esoteric point, but I find it fascinating, that in genearl the best research on behavior change, healing and transformation on a mental plane, all point to identity as the most powerful factor. I've been interested in habit change for a long time, but a lot of what habit change is good for is facilitating identity change. Who we think we are, subconsciously as much (or more than) consciously, is perhaps the most strong factor within our control for influencing our behaviour in an automatic way.

So, this is a big question moving forward: what do I want in life, specifically? In work, love, life in general. And who do I need to be, to achieve those goals?

Fascinating questions. I'll try and keep you posted on the results.

OK, only one to go and I'm caught up!

-I Out

So much going on!

 Alright, some rather larger than normal announcements.

First and foremost, Japan just announced it's opening its borders to tourists, so Suzannah and I are going on our long postponed honeymoon to Japan! It's happening real soon! Like, in two weeks 😮

We'll be gone from October 16th through November 6th, so if I don't respond quickly to emails or texts, this is why. As for right now, I'm trying to get ready for the trip, researching where I might like to go and what I might like to do, so we can plan our itinerary a bit and find some hotels, or buy tickets, if there are things we need to do ahead of time. I'm hoping to have some time and flexibility to be spontaneous and explore and have adventures as well. We've gotten lots of good recommendations already, since many of Suzannah's workmates are from Japan (and in some way intersecting with the travel and tourism industry.)

So, that's awesome. I'm also trying to learn as much Japanese as I can in the few weeks I have before I leave (and I'll continue while I'm there. I should be able to do some immersion learning, right?)

Also, the house is finalized. We did the back and forth dance and inspection etc., and things seem pretty much settled. Closing set for a week or so after we get back from the Japan honeymoon.

So... a lot going on. As I said in the beginning.

I don't know that I'll have anything to top that until I get back and hopefully have some awesome stories to share. Suzannah is going to be writing an article about the trip for her work, so I'm planning to help out by writing down some of my experiences as well, along the way. It also means there's more incentive to take good and copious pictures, so we may have more pictures that our normal sparse documentation. I prefer having the experience to recording it, but I'm also coming to appreciate how much gets forgotten if it doesn't get recorded in some way. Just enough pictures to jog my memory, of things I want to remember.

OK, that's it for this post. Another week has passed, so I'm still two behind :D

-I Out