I'm still thinking about 2024, and considering what's ahead in 2025. This time of year always makes me excited to start the whole year cycle again. I love the cycle of holidays from Halloween/Samhain to Easter/Ostara. Once it gets to summer, things can feel like one big uninterrupted block of just heat, of summer bullshit. Then August comes around and I can feel that everyone is done with it and ready to go back into hibernation again.
Excitement for the future aside, I want to take time here to appreciate the things that I did in 2024.
- Started a new aspect of my job, doing sysadmin things. I found it intimidating at first, and didn't know if I was qualified, but I've been really liking it.
- Moved myself and my family from one country to another.
- Bought a car.
- Stopped using most social media. At least the ones that were worst for me.
- Went through some really stressful times, but made it through.
We had it really good in Japan. I miss it over there. What comes to mind the most is how, over here, I feel like just one little amoeba in a pool of hundreds of thousands of amoebas. I'm just another asshole in the city now. At a certain scale of interaction, it starts to feel like people don't interact like people anymore, they start to interact like other people are the substrate through which they have to get things done. I'm sure this is just a big-city thing, and if I were to go into some small town, things would feel better. I've gotten used to it, for the most part, but I still notice it.
While I've been unpacking, it's always in my mind that we're going to be packing up again in just a couple short years. Not only that, we don't know where we're going. We could go back to Japan again. There are downsides to Japan, of course. Once I got here, I saw people with tattoos, piercings, wearing bright colors, wearing whatever clothes they want. Even as an outsider in Japan, it's obvious that there is a standard of decorum. Don't wear sunglasses, they obscure your eyes, so it's rude. Wearing shorts? I still did it, but most people don't, even in the dead of summer. If you don't follow the unwritten rules, nobody is going to say anything, but you will be silently judged. It doesn't really matter for a foreigner, we are expected to be a little weird. But as someone who is sensitive to the unspoken rules, it took up a small part of my mind anyway.
It might not be Japan though. There's really no saying. I just have to take comfort that we are here, for now.