Tag: crazy

The Body Talks

Let’s talk about sex, baby.

Well, sort of… That’s what my body kept saying to me today.

Today was a day in which my body felt like it was in a state of panic.  In a way, it was in a state of panic (or bordering on panic, anyway).  To my body, this panic was expressed as a painful desire, né need to procreate.  

“Hannah, I need to reproduce – it is what I am designed so well to do, and I’ve waited so long already… let me go!!”  

Sigh.

Such was the sort of conversation my body and I had today.  It complained and begged and reasoned, and I sighed and just accepted the complaints.

Now, the kicker to all of this is that I am almost entirely comfortable and at ease now (despite being quite sleepy).  Why is that?  The same reason (-ish) that my body has been panicky lately – I need physical contact in my life.  Good, real, physical contact, corporal contact, person-to-person skin-to-skin touch is an absolute necessity for me.

And living in Japan has given me almost none of that.  It has quite truly driven my body into a state of panic, in fact.  

How did I go from freak-out to calm?  I hung out with friends and went dancing with them.  In this time, I leaned on them, they leaned on me, we rubbed backs, hugged (the real kind), held hands, stood with our arms draped on one another’s shoulders or around the waist or hips, touched this or that spot on someone to get his/her attention.  In short, we had a nice amount of physical contact with one another.  No, it was not anything compared to what I am accustomed to having back in the US, – we are So touchy-touchy in Texas, and especially at dance there – however it was tremendous when compared to my average day and week of zero physical contact here in Japan.

I went to a dance event in Korea just a couple weekends ago.  I danced like crazy there, and I hugged people and had lots of physical contact with people who love me and whom I love.  I think that going from a weekend jammed full of corporal contact and love, back to the solitude and non-touching life I have here right now, my body had a sort of shock.  After having gone so many months with only a bit of physical contact here and there in a month, I was accustomed to it.  But, after spending a weekend filled with physical contact, it has been difficult to go back to the zero-touching lifestyle.

And so my body cried for a while, until it at last had some loving physical contact this afternoon and tonight, at which point it is ready to take on this next week (until I head to the beach next weekend, at which point the physical contact occasions will resume). 

So, instead of listening to the crybaby body make excuses about its evolution and its original design for existence, I just get myself some physical contact, some hugs and snuggles and such, and things work out beautifully.

Cheers to loving physical contact! ❤

Post-a-day 2017

Normal or normal?

I guess that whatever we are accustomed to having around us, ends up being what feels like “normal” to us.  Like how my life never seems to feel very exciting or special – it has become my experience of “normal”, and therefore can’t seem exceedingly exciting or abnormal to me.  

I regularly feel as though everyone can speak loads of languages, and so I’m nothing but average (or even below average) in that field.  But who are my acquaintances?  Well, we tend to end up spending time with people who, in some way or other, are quite similar to ourselves, do we not?  It is no wonder, then, that I have so many friends who are bi- and multilingual, and who have not only visited but lived in at least one country other than their own.  This isn’t to say, of course, that all of my friends meet this criteria.  Certainly not.  I just happen to have a lot of friends who do.

So, when I have a night like tonight, where my friends and I sound to an on-listener like we can’t seem to pick a language, as we constantly switch around between English (our one common language), French, and Japanese, I all too easily forget that this is not normal in the world.  Sure, it is normal for me and for my life, but that doesn’t mean that everyone does it regularly.  It doesn’t even mean that half the world could do it regularly, even if they wanted to do so.

Or perhaps they could.  I think, nonetheless, that I severely underappreciate my language abilities, by subconsciously expecting that the people who most closely surround me are an average sample of the whole.  What is normal for one person simply is what is around that person in life.  And two people with closely aligned lives might find the same things as one another to be normal.  So, of course the people who are out doing the same things I live to do, tend to see the world in a similar way to how I see it, and hold a subconscious standard of “normal” that is similar to my own.  That’s why our paths cross in the first place – we’re all into* this particular kind of awesome.

Filing a room with awesome people doesn’t mean that they aren’t all still awesome, just because the standard in the room is about equal.  It just means that you have an extra-awesome room that is full of a ton of awesome people.

I guess what I am aiming to say here is that, despite my feeling below-average and utterly “normal” and boring at times, I realize now that I am not viewing things outside of my nearest surroundings (so to speak), and that I realize that I am, in fact, awesome.  And I’m proud and happy about that.

Peace, y’all. ❤
Post-a-day 2017

A towel in your hair

Tonight, just after showering, towel still on my head, I took out the trash.  I had kind of hoped someone, anyone, would see me, but, alas, not a single person or car passed me on that brief voyage down the street…

But it was still cool (and quite cold), because I had mostly kept on the towel simply because it sounded like a fun thing to do, going into public with a towel on my head.  Sure, it isn’t the same as waking into Kroger one night with my hair wrapped in a towel, but that was back in the US, and I needed something silly in my life here tonight.  😛
Peace and love and goofiness to all, and to all a good night!
Post-a-day 2017

Ice Cream in the Cold

I’m not sure when it started for me, but, for some reason, I regularly crave ice cream in the cold weather.  And, typically, I find a way to satisfy that craving, despite the crazy looks I usually tend to receive.

One early December in college, a friend, Genevieve, and I each got a pint of ice cream, and went wandering around our campus, eating our ice creams.  I think it was in the 50s (Fahrenheit, of course), but there we were, wandering outdoors with our ice creams that wouldn’t melt on us.  I believe this was also around the time that I carried around my “I love you… you should, too” sign…, but that’s a different story to tell.

Anyway, eating ice cream has become one of my preferred pastimes in recent years.  Once, in Vienna, a girlfriend and I attempted to go have some ice cream or froyo, only to discover that the shop was closed for winter.  (We ended up eating specialty cupcakes elsewhere, which were delicious, but just not the same.)  While living in Vienna, I would treat myself to an Eiskaffee every so often (coffee with ice cream, topped with whipped cream), although it was cold throughout almost my entire stay.  I would say that was where it all started, as I had regularly enjoyed ice cream as a casual outing while living in Germany that summer, and so it was only logical that the habit continued into winter in Vienna.  However, that was after the college campus fun with Genevieve, so it could not have begun there (based on the sort of time structure we currently follow in our world, anyway).  Oh, well… it is of little importance right now, anyway, so I’m alright with not knowing how it all began.  The point is: I love ice cream, and I love eating ice cream when the weather is cold.

Also on that note, I finally made myself an Eiskaffee today.  However, my judgement on that it would be alright having it well after 10pm was ridiculously proven incorrect – it’s now 4am, and I’m only just growing truly sleepy.  We’ll see if I’m able to sleep in just a few minutes!  Anyway, here’s to sleeping for a healthy body, mind, and spirit.  🙂

 

Post-a-day 2017

Spaces after a period

Hello.  My name is Hannah, and I like writing with two spaces between sentences.  Why?  Well, for one, it creates a sense of finality, a true splitting between the two ideas we call sentences.  For another, though, it makes things look nice.  It creates a sense of pause and breath, when a paragraph otherwise could look like a long run-on.  That double space permits me to scan with ease, as well as to see what sorts of sentences are contained within whatever I am viewing.  With only one space between sentences, the words just flow together, as if one single idea, unable to organize itself into distinct yet beautiful thought, in the form of sentences.

Hello. My name is Hannah, and I like writing with two spaces between sentences. Why? Well, for one, it creates a sense of finality, a true splitting between the two ideas we call sentences. For another, though, it makes things look nice. It creates a sense of pause and breath, when a paragraph otherwise could look like a long run-on. That double space permits me to scan with ease, as well as to see what sorts of sentences are contained within whatever I am viewing. With only one space between sentences, the words just flow together, as if one single idea, unable to organize itself into distinct yet beautiful thought, in the form of sentences.

Perhaps you disagree with me.  That’s okay.  Fortunately, there is no rule requiring me to write with only a single space between sentences, because I very much dislike doing it.  In fact, there’s no rule whatsoever.  There is merely a preference by various editors and such for the single space.  So, you may use the single space, too, if you so wish.  However, I shall not.  So far as my eyes are concerned, I miss the period half the time when reading, and wonder what on Earth is going on in this ridiculously long sentence (before I backtrack to look for that period that I must have mistaken as a comma, of course).

Anyway, those are just a few of my thoughts for today.  Hope you enjoyed.  🙂

—I wrote this December 30th, but it apparently didn’t post… so, here it is now!—

I'm part of Post A Day 2016

Breakdown in Town

Today I did a sort of volunteering, and I had a total breakdown for myself.  (Yes, tears and all!)  😀

As I noticed my irritation at being skipped over for helping with certain things, I wondered why I cared – it’s not like any of this takes master brain power, or special Hannah skills in the first place, so why am I annoyed at being asked to do this task versus that task?  I eventually got to the source of my irritation:  I was asked to do this task, because it doesn’t required any Japanese knowledge or use.  I was not asked to do other tasks, because the assigners believed me incapable of accomplishing them (due to my level of Japanese).

It was a three-part annoyance initially.
1) They aren’t letting me to something, because they think me incapable.
2) They didn’t even check if I were capable of the tasks, but just assumed me incapable.
3) I actually was incredibly capable of those particular tasks, and had even done them before, when my Japanese was a much lower level than it is now.

Now, these are all things that could cause some real annoyance, right?  Right.

However, I looked further than that.  I am here, making a difference, and that’s my purpose of being here.  So why am I getting annoyed at this whole thing?  What’s behind those three concerns?  Well, I didn’t know at first.

As part of the thing at which I was helping, one of the conversations was about complaints we have in life, and what we get out of those complaints, as well as what we miss out on because of our having retained the complaints.

The area which stuck out to me instantly (and which I did not want to address, of course) was my job.  Almost immediately from the start of this one-year-contract job, I disliked it.  And, here I am, four moths later, still hating it.  Even though there are plenty of things I love about it, I still have this utter dislike of my job.  It’s boring.  It’s a waste of my time.  I’m better than this.  They’re doing it all wrong – it would makes Loads more sense to do it This way instead.  They’re stupid – they just need to listen to me and let me do it.  Why do I have to do it This way?… This way sucks! And, most of all, Why do I have to be here in such a crap situation?

So, seeing this constant, repeating complaints about my job, I looked at what I got out of the complaining.  More than anything else, I get to be right, and I get to avoid responsibility.  I get to be right that my job sucks and, obviously, everyone telling me what to do or how to do things is totally wrong, as well as that I shouldn’t be here and am better than all of this boring nonsense that a Monkey could do.  I get to avoid the responsibility of finding a job I love, and putting forth the effort required for such a task, allowing me to be a victim of the situation of my job, as opposed to the fact that I was lazy, and just went one of the easier routes in finding an international job.  This sucks, and it’s totally not my fault at all.  That was about it.

And, what did I miss out on by being right and by avoiding responsibility in finding a great job?  Relationships with the people around me each day.  Sleep (from staying up, hating having to go to work the next morning, and so putting it off as long as possible).  Fun at work.  Joy in my day-to-day.  Sharing my love and wisdom with the world.  Being happy, and spreading my usually-infectious happiness all around me.  Being calm and relaxed (because I was so stressed all the time with the annoyance of “My job sucks.”).  Loving life.  Being me*.

So, what did this have to do with my annoyance in the volunteering?  Well, with all of my complaints around my work, I had been so focused on proving to who knows who that everything is just wrong about my job, that I had sacrificed not only getting to know the country around me, but also really studying, using, and learning Japanese.  So, essentially, I was pissed off, because I had kept myself from learning more Japanese, which had caused the problem of the people here today thinking I didn’t know enough Japanese to help with certain fun tasks.  Wow.

 

Now, I cried tears of fury when I finally saw that.  Total breakdown, right?  Right.  So, I declared that, in terms of the Japanese learning and studying, I would write out the list of phrases and such that I normally would learn (when learning a new language) before going to bed tonight, and that I would have them translated correctly to Japanese by 6p.m. Wednesday.  A first step in creating my advancement in the study of the Japanese language.  And I’m actually really excited now, thinking about all the fun and silly and crazy things I’ll get to go do, now that I’m actually taking on learning Japanese (and by “actually taking on learning Japanese”, I mean learning it Really, ridiculously well).

I’m still not willing to give up everything on the work complaints, and I’m not so sure why…, but I’m going to look into that this week.  There’s something still in the way for me in letting that all go.  I’m okay letting go of most of it, but something deep down is holding tight to a wadded handful of complaints. (Haha, how ridiculous does this sound?  Ridiculous to me, and yet I still won’t let it all go!  Craziness, Hannah.  Craziness.)  😀  How about we plan that I get over it by Tuesday of next week, 12 noon?  Sounds good.  I can get my final hours and days of being angry at my job, and hopefully see how utterly ridiculous it, and just let it go and have a breakthrough where I create something new and fabulous (and beneficial, of course!) in its stead.  I’ve had a breakdown, so now it is time for a breakthrough!  Okay, go!  😀  Yess!  😀

 

*I, because I do care about grammar.

I'm part of Post A Day 2016