Hrrrrn.

It's been awhile.

I haven't felt particularly motivated to blog because I would inevitably feel obligated to talk about Japan but for the past month it's a large part of all I HAVE spoken about and anyone whom I care to address it with has likely already heard it from my own lips. Nonetheless, I wanted to kick the New Years Resolutions posts off the top spot and follow up to say that generally speaking, I have been keeping up with them as best I can and I think I'm doing alright.

I'll be at University of Maryland this Autumn. Since I have nothing really to do until then, I've been working provisionally and am looking for something a little more consistent and stable until school picks up. At least this gives me ample time for personal improvement and I have been making strides at the gym, that's for certain. Next goal, work in regular library and bookstore trips into my schedule as well.

I, of course, was depressed about Japan. But there is really nothing I can do to improve anything there. Despite myself, I'm starting to feel a little more buoyant lately, and would rather focus on my own needs and goals, and what I can do to improve myself. In the absence of worrying about what I cannot change, I can refocus my thoughts and efforts on what I can.

New Year's Revolutions

No, that's not a typo up there :3

So I did make some resolutions for this year. The first one I made was to kick my coke habit.

Not this kind.

I mean this kind.

 

 

Though possibly this kind.

 And I would snort any kind if it meant I could shit diamonds, I guess.

So that's been going fine. I don't really even want sodas anymore. I did experiment with a couple Fantas over the month but I think I'm ready to leave my sordid past, dripping with caramel colouring, high fructose corn syrup, and Red #40 behind me for good. Some people might laugh, but I really did have a true addiction to it. I even went through mild withdrawal symptoms. So uh. Yay me?

My next resolution was to stop beating myself up so much. Success on this goal is mixed - sometimes I do great at it, other times, not so much. It's still a work in progress. I've always had problems with being too down and too hard on myself, but it was worse than ever last semester. I managed to be down on myself so hard that I had basically driven myself down into a deep pit of extreme self-loathing, mired in near-constant feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy. At this point I don't feel like I'm out of the pit just yet, but I can see the light at the top - which is leaps and bounds over how I felt a couple months ago.

My third resolution phase is just now starting, now that I actually have money (thanx TUJ for taking until nearly a month after classes start to release my loan money - I didn't need food or anything!). But basically I resolved to pick up better habits and straighten out my life in reasonable, possible ways. I made myself a schedule to try to help make sure I have enough time to study, sleep enough, eat well, get chores done, and EXERCISE. My main health weakness I think has always been not taking enough time for myself. I overextend myself for long periods of time, and then completely withdraw afterward, letting my mind escape to some fantasy. It explains my life-long love of reading and video games, haha. Not that there's anything wrong with these things, but I haven't been good at pacing. I have a little time set aside in my days now where I can just unplug, withdraw, and mentally escape, every day. Kind of like slowly letting the pressure out rather than just exploding and then seemingly taking forever to regroup. Things like sleeping and eating well tend to fall to the wayside in my cycles of working, stressing, researching, worrying, exploding, and then vegetating. It's not the way I wanna be.

Maybe my problems seem trivial to some, but these were actually some of the hardest things in the world for me to do. Saying them outloud makes them sound so easy, even to me. "Stop drinking soda. Stop beating yourself up. Follow a schedule." - but I've never been able to do any of these things in the long term. I'm really trying hard now to set things right within myself. And I think I can.

Sorry, no source links for images this time. Google Image Search all the way :x

Back into the grind.

So school's on again and this semester, though schedule-wise it is much more forgiving and gives me more time to study and work on assignments, it is also shaping up to be much more challenging. My weaknesses, which I've struggled to conceal more than anything, since improving them seems so impossible at times, are becoming more and more apparent. The cardinal one being my inability to quickly and coherently regurgitate responses using learned information. A simple question makes me feel like I'm "on the spot" - in English as well as Japanese. It's apparently a trait of introverts, and I can't deny it. I often crave, need really, time to take in information, mull it over, and carefully think about what I want to say. As might be expected, this makes spontaneous questions or conversation a particularly embarrassing and painful ordeal. It makes me look and feel stupid, when I know I'm not. Well, not really anyway. I find myself struggling, more and more, searching for the right words and feeling lost in the moment, and minutes later having the perfect response come to me all too late.

Sometimes it feels like my brain is like a coffee filter. Information can only get in from one direction, and trying to make it flow the other way only earns me a shitty pile of grinds.

Image from Karirose's Portfolio

Tom. He's pretty amazing.

I lost a best friend today. I just wanted to share some pictures and a few memories. His name is Tom and he will always remain one of the smartest creatures I've had the pleasure of knowing. He was a quick study, learned words and names and skills faster than any of his brethren, and even took it upon himself to teach the others. He'd mastered the new door we installed for him and his parents literally in seconds, and then spent an hour demonstrating and cajoling the other dogs on how to use it.  He was kind, playful, and thoughtful. He loved toys like a puppy his whole long life, and though he literally had dozens, he remembered the names for each one, and could identify and find anything you asked him for with merely a suggestion. He stayed with me when I was ill and would hardly leave my side when I was recovering from surgery - he was a treasured companion on the long and lonely nights when at times the medicine or the pain wouldn't let me sleep. He always knew what I was talking about and always knew what to say, in his own way. He was funny, and expressive, and always longed to be with us and be one of us. And he was.

Big, beautiful, soulful eyes.

Concentrating - and being cute.

Listening closely. See the way his ear's perked out? You could tell you had his attention that way.

Nice and comfortable with his head up on the pillows.

Being free.

I love my dog so much and I'm so glad I was able to see him again. I missed him terribly when I was in Japan and Skyped with him even. It breaks my heart knowing that I'm leaving for Japan again in just a day and that he won't be waiting the next time I come home. Though this hurts more than even I expected it to, because I did try to prepare myself, knowing he was very sick, I wouldn't trade knowing him these 11 years, from the first seconds of his birth until the very day he died, for anything.