Reeewiiiiind~~~!
Do you believe in overhauling your life?
When I say that I don't mean the part in Hollywood movies where they get out the credit card and kaching, the duckling turns into the swan.
I mean those small moments where you purposefully decide "I don't like this, so I will stop doing this."
It doesn't have to be big things all the time, but for me it's always got to do with finding the source of your discomfort and working on eliminating it.
The reason for this is that recently I have been really unhappy until I sat down at 2am this morning and just asked myself why.
I am generally very annoyed with people who say "fuck what other people think" or even better "the only person standing in your way is yourself", because that is generally unfair to every person who is truly supporting you. People who really don't care about what other people think are loners. What is means is that you shouldn't bend over for other people, but we are social beings, we are nver completely alone.
And if something si standing in my way, it is often a problem I have not made myself, like how I am not made of money or endless confidence, and how different opportunities arise for different people.
What I truly bleive though, is that sometimes the only person who can help you, the person who can have the last word in whatever decision you have to make, is you.
Here is what I have come up with:
1. This pillow is really uncomfortable but I keep using it because I have spent 1000yen on it.
2. I actually like one of the roughly 10 pieces of clothing I bought in Japan. They don't fit, are not my style and I actually don't like wearing skirts.
3. There are lots of things I haven't done because I have no one to do them with or people keep cancelling on me
4. I feel a lot of pressure to make new friends.
5. I am worried about my career prospects because on paper I will have acquired no other skills than my third language and I started worrying about where to go from here.
My first thought was: Hey, that list could have been much longer! And when you are unhappy, it will certainly feel much longer, too, but with clear targeting, I think some of my stress reduced itself.
1 and 2 are very easily eliminated: I threw out that cushion and ordered some clothes at H&M. It's not even so much about me not liking oversized clothing, I don't mind it, but my style is just fundamentally different, and I wanted to feel comfortable, so I will look for stuff that actually fits next time.
3 has also already been tackled: It sounds negative but it isn't - of course I keep asking my friends out but if they don't have the time to go somewhere with me, I shall go by myself! Why should I mope around just because someone else is actually having fun without me? Nope. Recently I have felt the intense need to leave Kyoto for a bit, so for Christmas, I have booked a hotel in Nagoya, which was hard enough to find, and from there I am going to Ise and Toba, have a good time by myself, and try to go to an onsen by myself, even though I am a little scared of that.
If I don't try out new things even if I am apprehensive, then I will never find out whether or not I was missing out on a lot of fun.
For this trip I will probably go into overdraft, which is why it took me a long time to decide, but you know what, what the heck. The last time I have been in overdraft was 7 years ago, and that was a whopping tenner, I think. I shall live. Plus I don't want to waste my time pushing everything back ("I can still do this later") unti in the end it will be too late.
4. Now I don't know if that makes me sound arrogant or asocial, but I have never made real friends when I made a conscious effort to, because that has only made me awkward. Other people's persistence on my having to be lonely because I am not surrounded by people 24/7 is what puts me under pressure.
I am not lonely because I don't have 50 friends to call. I am occasionally lonely because those friends I could be meeting, continously cancel because they put other things above me (and thsoe people are curiously all Japanese)
I don't have to have tons of Japanese friends. It's not a trophy hunt.
Last is 5, which is a bigger worry that has been creeping up to me occasionally because I like to have a plan. Thinking back however, I notice that even at those times when I ahd a plan, something went wrong and I had to overthink things and I still managed to get to this point. Life tends to work that way if you don't completely give up on yourself.
The thing that annoyed me most however is that I am not aware of what I is available to me or simply what it all means. Know the feeling when you look up job offers and don't even know what the job titles mean? I am not aware of what is out there, in thatb respect I often envy my art and design friends such as moonfoot_gamgee and fishings, they seem so focused and passionate, while I am mostly confused.
So again, using the brain that I have been given to arrive at possible solutions, I thought "Who could help me find stuff like this out?" since neither my parents nor siblings have ever gone to university and none of them were ever interested in having a career rather than just a job.
The answer: well, my university can help at least in part. I know my huge disadvantage is that I have no internships under my belt because I could never afford to work for someone for nuts, but I have decided to get a general overviw first, and now actually look at everything my uni's career service has to offer. It looks useful, and I think once I am back I am finally going to book an appointment with a career counsellor that i have always been so afraid of and well, then we'll see. It's better than nothing.
When I say that I don't mean the part in Hollywood movies where they get out the credit card and kaching, the duckling turns into the swan.
I mean those small moments where you purposefully decide "I don't like this, so I will stop doing this."
It doesn't have to be big things all the time, but for me it's always got to do with finding the source of your discomfort and working on eliminating it.
The reason for this is that recently I have been really unhappy until I sat down at 2am this morning and just asked myself why.
I am generally very annoyed with people who say "fuck what other people think" or even better "the only person standing in your way is yourself", because that is generally unfair to every person who is truly supporting you. People who really don't care about what other people think are loners. What is means is that you shouldn't bend over for other people, but we are social beings, we are nver completely alone.
And if something si standing in my way, it is often a problem I have not made myself, like how I am not made of money or endless confidence, and how different opportunities arise for different people.
What I truly bleive though, is that sometimes the only person who can help you, the person who can have the last word in whatever decision you have to make, is you.
Here is what I have come up with:
1. This pillow is really uncomfortable but I keep using it because I have spent 1000yen on it.
2. I actually like one of the roughly 10 pieces of clothing I bought in Japan. They don't fit, are not my style and I actually don't like wearing skirts.
3. There are lots of things I haven't done because I have no one to do them with or people keep cancelling on me
4. I feel a lot of pressure to make new friends.
5. I am worried about my career prospects because on paper I will have acquired no other skills than my third language and I started worrying about where to go from here.
My first thought was: Hey, that list could have been much longer! And when you are unhappy, it will certainly feel much longer, too, but with clear targeting, I think some of my stress reduced itself.
1 and 2 are very easily eliminated: I threw out that cushion and ordered some clothes at H&M. It's not even so much about me not liking oversized clothing, I don't mind it, but my style is just fundamentally different, and I wanted to feel comfortable, so I will look for stuff that actually fits next time.
3 has also already been tackled: It sounds negative but it isn't - of course I keep asking my friends out but if they don't have the time to go somewhere with me, I shall go by myself! Why should I mope around just because someone else is actually having fun without me? Nope. Recently I have felt the intense need to leave Kyoto for a bit, so for Christmas, I have booked a hotel in Nagoya, which was hard enough to find, and from there I am going to Ise and Toba, have a good time by myself, and try to go to an onsen by myself, even though I am a little scared of that.
If I don't try out new things even if I am apprehensive, then I will never find out whether or not I was missing out on a lot of fun.
For this trip I will probably go into overdraft, which is why it took me a long time to decide, but you know what, what the heck. The last time I have been in overdraft was 7 years ago, and that was a whopping tenner, I think. I shall live. Plus I don't want to waste my time pushing everything back ("I can still do this later") unti in the end it will be too late.
4. Now I don't know if that makes me sound arrogant or asocial, but I have never made real friends when I made a conscious effort to, because that has only made me awkward. Other people's persistence on my having to be lonely because I am not surrounded by people 24/7 is what puts me under pressure.
I am not lonely because I don't have 50 friends to call. I am occasionally lonely because those friends I could be meeting, continously cancel because they put other things above me (and thsoe people are curiously all Japanese)
I don't have to have tons of Japanese friends. It's not a trophy hunt.
Last is 5, which is a bigger worry that has been creeping up to me occasionally because I like to have a plan. Thinking back however, I notice that even at those times when I ahd a plan, something went wrong and I had to overthink things and I still managed to get to this point. Life tends to work that way if you don't completely give up on yourself.
The thing that annoyed me most however is that I am not aware of what I is available to me or simply what it all means. Know the feeling when you look up job offers and don't even know what the job titles mean? I am not aware of what is out there, in thatb respect I often envy my art and design friends such as moonfoot_gamgee and fishings, they seem so focused and passionate, while I am mostly confused.
So again, using the brain that I have been given to arrive at possible solutions, I thought "Who could help me find stuff like this out?" since neither my parents nor siblings have ever gone to university and none of them were ever interested in having a career rather than just a job.
The answer: well, my university can help at least in part. I know my huge disadvantage is that I have no internships under my belt because I could never afford to work for someone for nuts, but I have decided to get a general overviw first, and now actually look at everything my uni's career service has to offer. It looks useful, and I think once I am back I am finally going to book an appointment with a career counsellor that i have always been so afraid of and well, then we'll see. It's better than nothing.