around

I'm doing an experiment. Last September/October, my anxiety kicked into high gear. Like, really high gear. Now, maybe it was the culture shock sinking in, maybe it was the return to school after summer break combined with the much colder (and darker, and more miserable) season. But .  September/October 2014 is also when I stopped jogging as a form of exercise, because it was getting cold out and I didn't want to spring money for a gym membership. (Still don't.) Bike by my apartment complex in Taiwan. But exercise is supposed to be good for combating anxiety. It has the side effect of making me hungry, so even on bad days where I get so anxious that eating is a chore and food taste like dirt, I crave real food and end up devouring it. I've been doing Pilates, but Pilates involves a lot of mental work. Keeping a stance, changing exercise moves, focusing on form, that kind of thing. Whereas jogging is mindless; do the same motion continuously, for as long as...

"Ohio" gozaimasu. Because I'm in Ohio. Get it? It's hilarious. And it's gonna be hilarious every morning that I say it while I'm here. Reverse culture shock is possibly the weirdest thing to experience. Because when you leave the West and go live in the East, you expect things to be baffling. You expect your impulses for polite social conduct to be wrong. You expect the common language to be overwhelming and strange. You expect to hesitate when counting out money because you're not used to the shapes, colors, and amounts. You expect to be struck by the cacophony of millions of small details being radically different  from what your mind expects. When you return to your home country, the place where you've been raised and indoctrinated into the culture since birth, and find that your impulses for polite social conduct are wrong, it's really strange. You find that the language you speak fluently and understand perfectly to be overwhelming ...

I haven't been writing here in over a year and I know why: it's because I'm pretty sure nobody wants to hear what I have to say. Taiwan was fun. Taiwan was an adventure. Taiwan was not the stress-fest that my daily...weekly...monthly... life often is here in Japan. And the number one thing nobody  wants to hear about is someone else's problems. So, you know. I keep that shit to myself. I do want to talk, though, and probably about something nobody wants to hear about: sexualities that aren't their own. I'm ace. (Asexual.) A little over a year ago, I was four nights away from moving to Japan, and I finally got around to googling "asexuality" beyond its dictionary definition, which is "a person who doesn't experience sexual attraction." The problem with that dictionary definition is that nobody ever explicitly describes to you what sexual attraction feels like . The entire world assumes that everyone feels it, so when you begin to r...

I'm not moving back to the States this year, and probably not next year, either. I haven't gotten my fill of Japan yet, and I have a long  ways to go in learning Japanese. That said, when I finally do  go back to the States, I will definitely be bringing back some cultural baggage and expectations of what belongs in a home. These things include: kotatsu A kotatsu is a low, heated table with a removeable top so you can drape blankets over it. When I'm back in the States, I will search high and low for one until I get my hands on it, and if I can't find one I will figure out how to make one. What does a person need central heating for when they can wrap up in blankets like a burrito and stick their feet under a heated table? My feet are usually the only  part of me that get cold, and a kotatsu is so effective at keeping them warm. removing shoes before going in the house  I've gone from "Eh, I don't wanna take them off just to get that one little thing o...

I just realized that quite often, I forget who I am. I can't look around and be reminded. I don't see myself in any of the ads on TV, or in magazines, or before Youtube videos, or in movies, or in songs, or on the marketing for in-store products, or on billboards, or in the conversations people have about their lives and relationships. I don't see myself because the world is all about sex, and I'm asexual . The words I use for myself don't exist in the vocabulary of the population at large: heteromantic, asexual, ace, aesthetically attracted. The divisions I draw between romantic feelings and physical actions are seen as superfluous and strange to people for whom intimate love and sex are one and the same. The conundrums I face on a regular basis when it comes to determining how much casual contact is considered casual by others is ridiculous. "Well, can the contact be considered sexual?" I don't fucking know . I just read a fanfiction tonight ...

I'm gonna put it right out there and say that the last year has been, for the most part, more stressful than not. I'm also going to admit that a lot of it likely comes from myself. I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well in all areas of my life: work, friends, family, studies, and hobbies. I don't want to just do decently at my job: I want to make an impact. I don't just want my friends to like me; I want to be a steadfast and healthy presence in their lives. I don't want to just be a member of my family, I want to be a caring, considerate, dependable member of my family. I don't want to just live in Japan; I want to learn Japanese to a near fluent level, and absorb all the Japanese learning I possibly can while I'm here. I don't just want to stay healthy; I want to be noticeably fit. I don't want to just write in my free time; I want to publish a novel. (Hell, at this point, I'd settle for finishing a goddamn story.) I put a hell of a l...