Tag: culture

Dance, if you wanna

One of the most upsetting things in our society right now for me – one of the day-to-day things that really bugs me and kind of breaks my heart – is how much gender is used as a restrictor by so much of society.

I mentioned how I thought my nephew really would love learning and doing ballet and other dances, and I was met with a passive laugh and a certain, somewhat snarky comment to say that it never would happen, but what a cute idea. I was gobsmacked. The person didn’t even think I was saying it because I meant it. She actually thought I was just saying it passively, as opposed to my sharing something I genuinely believed and had hopes could happen.

Granted, my sister has very much played the gender toys game for her kids – pink and purses and baby-dolls are for girls, and blues and trucks and superheroes are for boys. However, dance is something amazing for any and all people to do, especially athletes. My sister is an athlete, and she can understand that benefit of dance especially. I think she might be willing to consider the idea of dance for my nephew, if it were presented appropriately and he showed interest in it openly.

Even that, though, has its own degree of upset and disappointment for me: that it has to be presented appropriately. I don’t just mean showing that dance is awesome, but showing that dance is so awesome that it is okay for both genders. Because I know, that likely would be part of it for her.

If I ever have children, no matter the gender of each and every, they all will do karate and dance and volleyball and all the fun, beautiful, beneficial stuff out there that we can find and/or create for them to do. Gender will have no value in the matter. It merely will determine which bathroom they use while at the activity.

Post-a-day 2021

^ Wrote that wrong at first again, but caught myself before submitting! Happy 2021, folks!

January 1, 2021

A new year has begun on the calendar. I already wrote the date wrong today, the first time I was writing it, and don’t even notice until the second time I was getting it wrong. But I corrected the second one and wrote 2021 going forward from there. 😛

It doesn’t feel life a different year or anything. It just feels like another today. And it is just another today. It is filled with endless possibilities, as is every other today that ever has existed and that ever will exist. Such is life, in such terrifying beauty. 😉

My mom and I watched the sunrise on the beach this morning – the first sunrise of the year. It is a Japanese tradition that I still like to follow. My mom pointed out to me that the only other people out on the beach for sunrise were also Asian. Well, they were Asian, that is, and we were consciously practicing an Asian custom. (Funny how that came out so naturally at first.) Nonetheless, it was lovely and kind of magical. I’d never attended a beach sunrise where the sun wasn’t completely blocked by full cloud coverage before today.

Enjoy a few photos from it here:

Oh, and it was almost freezing out there (quite literally), and it was very windy.

I wish you a happy, happy year this year – May you embrace the beautiful, bountiful possibilities that each of these 365 days offers to you.

Post-a-day 2021

Look at that!! ^

Happy New Year: A Completion of 2020

I am proud of myself for trusting myself this year. I am proud of myself for keeping true to and using my heart in so much of what I have done, both big and small, and also all in between.

I am grateful that I did both of those this year, and I am especially grateful that, often without my realizing it, they were my kakizome at play in my daily life, slowly transforming me further into an expression of my true self.

Arigatougozaimasu ありがとうごさいます😊

I am a bit nervous regarding what is next, and I think it is because I am reaching a sort of crossroads. Something very true to myself is at a nearby turn, but it is scary to go a new path for me. It is usually thrilling and wonderful and amazing, and I am usually grateful to have done it after the fact, but it is scary nonetheless. So, I am scared. And I am stepping forward nonetheless – terrified and confident, full of self-trust/self-confidence and heart (jishin to kokoro 自信と心 [my kakizome]) – creating what is next for me and my life. 🙂 🙏🐪

I wish you all a happy, lovely, love-filled and love-expressed new year. Akemashite omedetou! 明けましておめでとう！！

Post-a-day 2020

Christmas Day? No way

It seems that today has been Christmas Day. It felt very much like an average Thursday for the books, and my mother agrees.

Turns out that it has actually been a Friday, and it didn’t even feel like that. Suffice it to say that this has been probably my oddest Christmas ever. And I lived in Japan for a while, where KFC and drinking parties where most people wear (slutty?) Santa costumes are the norm for Christmas Day night.

We saw road signs from Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT) yesterday and today, and they were kind of hilarious. They read, “He sees you when you’re speeding. He knows when you drive baked.”* One of the best holiday lights setups I’ve seen this year, for sure!

Well, it’s 7:30pm, and I’m exhausted, so I’m going to do my stretches and reading now, and get to sleep. Merry Christmas, folks!

*If you do not get the reference here, it is a play with the words from “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, the song.

Post-a-day 2020

Value in being valued

On a walk the other day with my mom, we met these nice old people who live on her street, just after we picked up some ujukitsu off the ground in their backyard/the abandoned small golf course. Turns out that they met one another while teaching for a year in Japan on a military base (that is no longer in existence) near Tokyo. I am familiar with the train line that led to it, according to them. Before Japan, they each had taught a year or two in Hawai (he) and the Philippines (she), and then they met and married and moved to teach on a base in Germany together. They were part of the foreign service teaching for 14 years altogether, I believe they had said. Then they moved to Houston and taught in elementary schools here until they retired. It was adorable to hear.

Considering my frustrations in this part-time job I am now working, I have wondered if something in school teaching is still calling to me. I miss having classes of kids, and teaching something – and something valuable – each and every day I go to work, and being loved and trusted and valued by those around me, in immediate interaction with me every day. Though, perhaps it is less about the classroom and more about the respect and valuing and love that comes to me in a classroom, but that has seemed nearly nonexistent in this position. I have even felt disrespected and incredibly undervalued and unappreciated here.

I wonder what there is for me to do about that.

I know one thing for sure: I’m tired of relying on the way I am told things work. Word-of-mouth information is faulty, and it has proven itself to be so over and over again in this job. I am tired of it. I will do my research for all of my questions, and clock the hours and expect no pay for them, and I will be prepared for all the stuff at this job that will pop up at some time or other – the crazy situations all seem to be inevitable, and I prefer to be prepared and to know what on Earth is going on. So, I will prepare myself, and I will not rely any longer on anyone else to teach me what I need to know or what they all think I need to know – that has been terrible so far, and I am done with it.

In doing that, I will be prepared as I want to be prepared, and as I always prepare myself when I care about something. The system is faulty, and I do not have to follow it – I can do better than it, and I shall, especially in this part of it.

Separately, I am doing more photos tomorrow morning, and I am nervous. I have been doubting and stressed since that bad photo shoot where I didn’t trust myself the other week. I know I need to take photos to move past this, but that doesn’t make it less scary for me. Someone will be relying on me, and I will be relying on a camera… and myself. Now, I just need to trust myself, and do what is needed to be done. Even if that seems like a ridiculous something. You can do this, Banana. Trust yourself and have faith in yourself – Jishin to Kokoro.

Post-a-day 2020

Stress and Presence

My mom and I had some stuff go rather poorly yesterday. I was extremely tired, both physically and emotionally, and she was rather tired and stressed, so it wasn’t a good start for entering into somewhat stressful territory for us together. Nonetheless, it happened, and it didn’t go very well, and we both were left, at the end of the day, dissatisfied with parts of our interactions throughout the day. This morning, we started to talk about it all, and that went even worse. Would you guess it? We were both even more exhausted and stressed than yesterday. So, no shocker at how that all went this morning.

After a morning of delight and an afternoon and evening filled with stress and a lack of logic/sense/consciousness from others, I was really working to get off it and to forgive and be okay. Once I was in the midst of all of that, rather than cry my heart and exhaustion out and still have to work, I set myself to mental work to see what I could resolve. I couldn’t alter my surroundings, but I could reconsider my stance within them, and I could use that time, rather than to be stressed, to re-evaluate what really would make the difference for my mom and me and our joint stress regarding our interactions lately and, especially, yesterday and this morning.

By the end of work time, I had it all figured out. I hopped into the car with my mom to go look at Christmas lights together in the area, and we talked through everything over the first 15-20 minutes. We both got heard and clear, and we established actions to take in the future whenever certain scenarios arise (the ones that have been sorts of trigger situations lately). It makes a world of a difference when neither of us is in the middle of doing something, and we are in the same place as one another. It also helped that I was reminded of how stressed life can be when I live it on other people’s levels instead of my own.

So, life is a whole lot better having things clear between my mom and me. That was a huge layer of stress today that feels amazing to have removed at last (though it was only about 20 hours in existence).

And, all I care to say how about all the other nonsense I experienced today with work is: Please, be present in life, and pay attention – it really sucks for the people around you whenever you don’t, whether you notice it or not.

At that, I bid you a good night and restful, refreshing sleep tonight. 🙂

P.S. Happy my brother’s birthday to you, and happy winter solstice! This has been the shortest day of the year, signing off!

Post-a-day 2020

Fantasyland Visas and Green Cards

Do you ever find yourself fantasizing about something, and realize that you do not necessarily want that actual something to happen, but that you are really just enjoying the fantasy in and of itself – in a way, you are fantasizing for the sake of fantasizing, and that is completely satisfying for you?

You see, I met these young guys recently, and one in particular has stuck out to me. He is adorable in many ways. He is also very likely several years younger than I am. And I’m not so sure he knows that. At the most, he might think I’m a year or two older than he is. I have a feeling that I am several more years older than that age difference.

That being said, I have nonetheless been very much enjoying the idea of some sort of relationship developing between the two of us, in a dating/partnership capacity. It took quite a while for me to develop an understanding of my own age prejudices, and to clear them up for myself. However, where I stand now, I have no personal qualms with great age differences in either direction for a couple. (I have almost always been completely okay with friendship age differences, as I have always had friends who are very different ages than I am, both older and younger.) And so, I find myself wondering and imagining how it might be to pursue one of those traditionally odd age differences with this guy. And, I am not having this imagination adventure simply for the age aspect – he is also adorable, remember.

Usually, when I find someone cute, it is in a rather disinterested, ‘I don’t actually see a future for us, and I won’t worry about it,’ kind of way. And whenever I think someone is cute, I won’t think almost anything more than that. If I do, those thoughts won’t last beyond a day or a few. With this guy, however, these thoughts have lasted a couple weeks now. And this is surprising to me. I don’t see myself as truly interested in him. He’s just that casual situation of ‘What an adorable guy.’ But that is why I am beginning to believe that this whole imagination adventure is just for the sake of having an adventure in my life right now, and in an area of my life where I have not really had much adventure before.

So, rather than be carried away with this mental adventure, and falsely believe that it is something I really want, just because I’m having fun with it in my head, I am letting myself do just that: have fun with it. I am enjoying it. I am clear it is not something I want actively to pursue, and so I will not be pursuing it. If it were something I truly wanted, I would pursue it. But all it is is some thing fun inside my head, and so I will have fun with it inside my head. And, I think, knowing that it is only something in my head somehow makes it all the more ridiculous and, therefore, fun to enjoy.

Just my thoughts on the matter tonight. 😉 Kind of ridiculous, right? 😂

Sweet dreams, folks! You know line will be! 😀

Post-a-day 2020

Pass-where?

For the first time since I was a very small child, I do not have a valid passport for travel.

In a way, it feels utterly odd and out of this world. In another way, I don’t even notice it, because it wouldn’t necessarily do me any good to be valid right now anyway…. which is, in its own way, utterly odd and out of this world.

And, what’s even more weird is that I’m not even sure what I’m going to do about it all. I don’t even know if passports are being processed regularly again yet. Not a clue. And that, in and of itself, is also weird for me and my life.

So, yeah… there’s a lot of weird around passports on my life right now. (It’s extremely doubtful, however, that I am the only one in such a situation right now, though, which is simultaneously comforting and, again, rather weird.) 😛

Post-a-day 2020