On prodigal returns

On boats, fish and concerts

I'm really kind of bad at the whole updating thing, aren't I? Apologies, Silent Readers, as always. Things are cosily chaotic in my world as always. Ups and downs, back and forths, and it's hard to really know where my mind is at. While that's pretty liberating, I feel a little like I'm lost at sea, just paddling any which way and hoping that whatever current carries my boat will eventually carry me to some peace of mind. It's been a bumpy couple of weeks.

On yo-yo work and yo-yo days

August has so far not been the most stellar of months for me, at least not work-wise. Everyone in Japan is currently celebrating Obon, which means that everyone who's not originally from Tokyo is leaving the city to hang out with relatives, and everyone who's actually from Tokyo is deciding to not give a shit about English. My bookings are low, and I got another pesky negative yesterday. It ended up making me feel rather crushed. Luckily though, the blow was significantly softened in that I'd already asked my bosses for my lesson score comments, so that I'd know what to improve and what I was doing right. This apparently impressed the both of them to the degree that they even mentioned it to the Gaba higher-ups. I've gotta hand it to Peewee, him telling me to ask my superiors really put me in an awesome light. One of them came by my booth today to tell me to not mind the negative, and that he 'got more negatives in the first few months than I can count with all of my fingers and toes'. My colleagues also tell me not to freak out about it either. I'm working on caring less. Some students are just messed up, I guess.

On new nicknames and backburner dreams

Having colds in Japan is something else. I've had one brewing for the past few days, and after a complete zombie day on Tuesday where there was snot coming out of my nose at a near faucet-like capacity. Shit was nasty. I don't know if it just made me seem like a more engaged teacher, like 'Hey, I care so much about my students that I'm at work even when I look like I should be six feet under', or if they were all just nice people, but no one gave me shit about it. On the contrary, the last two people I had that day when I was at my most Night-of-the-Living-Dead-esque were super friendly. That being said, I still managed to get Wednesday off and spent nearly all of it sleeping and binge-watching Orange Is the New Black. I'm still pretty out of it, and I don't feel like eating much of anything at all, but I still make myself. Anything to get away from feeling like a truck ran me over.

On good trips and strange brains

 
I find it funny how my brain and body decided to go: "Oh, so the person who's been visiting is actually your boyfriend? Sorry, our bad." and suddenly dumping massive amounts of affection on me to spread around a week before the Philosopher left. Now I feel like all the hugs and cuddles. Awesome. Mom did tell me that things would be weird, but I feel a little guilty for how things have been recently. I wish this could've kicked in sooner. It's not like I've been aloof on purpose, but things haven't felt easy for me. And while we've spent a lot of time trying to iron out awkward issues that arose on account of everything being horribly weird (because there's like, what, half a world between us now?), I did really enjoy having him here, and we did a lot of pretty great stuff.