Tag: culture

I had the best day with you today

Some of the best days are the ones where you not only don’t pull out your phone, but you don’t even realize that you aren’t pulling it out… you come across it in your bag, say, near the end of the night, and you think, Oh, hello, phone… Haven’t seen you all day!, and then you continue on just as before, without doing anything but leaving the phone where it already has been hanging out all day.

Yep… some of the best days are like that… like today… 🙂

Though, just as Pooh and Piglet always share, I suppose that every day is not only like today, but it is today… “My favorite,” he always says… 🙂

Post-a-day 2019

Dressed for Work

Tonight, I attended with my mom a sake mini-course and tasting event.

As predicted, every Japanese man was in a dark suit with a white shirt… however, the slight touch of color was found in a tie or pocket square in the Americanized men.

Also as predicted, there was a fabulous array of Japanese foods, the presentation was brief but extremely informative, and the tasting was hilariously wonderful.

While there, I considered strongly at one point what everyone else was wearing.

Beforehand, I had asked my mom, a person who is usually quite particular about dressing to the appropriate level for things, if I needed to change into a different dress than what I had on… I showed her the dress, which was a much nicer and more business-y version of what I already was wearing, and she didn’t think the change was needed…. she pointed out that she was wearing something quite similar, albeit slightly nicer-looking (same color scheme, different pieces).

We had been at an art film showing earlier on, and I had worn my current outfit for that and felt totally comfortable in my choice, but I figured it was best to check with her regarding the Japanese event.

Sure enough, once there, she commented that we should have known everyone would be in business suits and the likes, since it was a Japanese event… I reminded her that that was precisely why I had asked about my outfit ahead of time, and she rather shrugged her shoulders unconcernedly at this with an Oh, well…, and we moved on to enjoy ourselves, anyway.

At this point, I thought about how everyone was probably just coming straight from work, anyway, and so they were all just in work clothes… and then I realized that I, too, was coming straight from work and that I, too, was just in work clothes…

I don’t have a corporate job in an office with a cubicle on a floor in a big building… or anything like it… I’m a writer and photographer… and, today, I was editing photos, and then sent them off to a client – much work accomplished for a single afternoon, actually… and this cotton dress and summer sandals are what I wore to do that… casual and cute, but not office business…

In “Hannah’s Life, Created”, a notebook I compiled a couple years back, while living in Japan, I have a brief description of what I want my work attire to be… tonight was a beautiful acknowledgement of my having achieved that desire, and, in that instant of noticing this, I was filled with a sense of calm confidence in regards to my life – I am doin a beautiful job of pursuing my goals and dreams and of becoming and being the person I want to be.

I’m not all the way there yet… I am there with some things, though, and I am well on my way to more and more at any moment(!!!)…. and I love it.

I really do love it.

Yes, it would have made sense to wear the nicer dress tonight… no, it didn’t ultimately matter for what tonight specifically was…, yes, it was amazing to notice what I did about being in my ‘work clothes’, and so was totally worth it this time to be a bit under-dressed…, and no, I never really quite fit in at Japanese events, anyway – Gaijin Smash to the max!**

So yeah… we had an awesome time at the event, learned loads about sake. – and yes, I am fully aware of how odd it is that I take such an interest in sake, when I drink just about no alcohol in the average month – and ate wonderful foods over wonderful conversations.

And I had a lovely discovery about my current status in life, and it tickles and overjoys me even now, hours later. 🙂

Yay, life!

And thank you, God, for entrusting me with this piece of the path – I love this part, and I trust you fully, as I throw myself fully into this lovely hard work!

Peace

Hannah

**Man, do I miss my store Mister Maxx in Toride, Ibaraki!… like a cross between Target, Petsmart, and a bakery!

Post-a-day 2019

Let’s Nike it

The music is playing on my head again… the music from our routine, I mean…

Is it because I want to do the routine?…, because I want to be that clean (in my dancing)?…, because I want to be the professional I know it would lead to being in the dance world?…, or because I want that body shaping I had at the time?…

In the past, it was all about the first several reasons, but I think it is, this time, about the final reason: the body.

I watch videos from then, and I am surprised at how slim my legs are, how flat my belly is… and that surprise really drives home how unfit I had become in the past couple years.

I get it, though – a lot of stress in a certain kind of way can do this to me, especially with how I was emotionally and psychologically until this calendar year.

Now, however, I want to be done with it all, and move forward as the person I want to be, physical body and all.

We’ve been doing this exercise for two months, now… I was worried to look at a scale, because it doesn’t feel like the fat has been rolling off or anything… and I didn’t want to imagine I had been as bad off as I would have had to have been, if it has been rolling off, and this is how I look right now… (hope you understood that)…

I have so much muscle showing up, it’s almost funny…, but then it’s also a bit sad that the only thing left to complete the visual picture is food – the food I have done a terrible job at managing these past several months with my in-and-out circumstances with my home (which continued with a sudden water issue that kicked me out again last night, after having had only five days back at home since the last necessary departure)… so, in a way, I’m not fit yet, because I don’t have a stable home…

How crazy an idea is that?… really makes me wonder about people who generally have no stable homes… hmm… it’s so dreadful, even knowing that I have somewhere I could stay (most of the time, anyway)…, I can only imagine not having that, and trying to be healthy… even good emotional health would be troublesome to come by at that point, I think… man…

Anyway… so I’m back at home again, and I’m clearing out things, cleaning up and tidying, slowly taking on the KonMari lifestyle for realz – I want this, and it definitely feels like the world has been asking me to do it lately… perhaps a crazy and spectacular move is in the mix in the near future, and this has all been necessary to prepare me for it… only those in the know know, and I do not seem to be one at the present time… if only future self could hand me some words of wisdom. 😛

Actually, perhaps this clearing out is due to inspirational words of wisdom from my future self… we shall see what comes, I guess, and that is all we can do about the future, really.

And so I will make way for what is to come, and I will be better prepared in doing so than if I had stayed unaltered … for life is change, and nothing is ever stagnantly the same, so let us change willingly and wholly with life, embracing it as we go… that’s my present intention, anyway. 🙂

Let’s do it.

Post-a-day 2019

Some days, round diamond

Some days, that one extremely rich acquaintance-slash-friend gets engaged, and you find out the ring was a “4.5 carat, round flawless, D color, Excellent cut (XXX)”…

And you think, Well, that sounds nice… big, for sure, but whatevs…

And then a girlfriend tells you that, not only is that “HUGE”, but the stone alone is worth over three hundred thousand dollars…

… and your eyes open really wide, and you sit there with your jaw wide open, and then you start belly laughing, while you begin to process it all…

And then you learn that the proposal was a scavenger hunt that involved multiple locations and a private plane (owned by that same friend-slash-acquaintance who was the one proposing), and you think, Well, sheee-itt…, he really is Christian Grey after all.

And it all feels quite silly instead of depressing in terms of your friend who used to date him, and you giggle uncontrollably for a bit, and end up having a wonderful time with that girlfriend who used to date the early days version of your verified Christian Grey…

So goes life, I suppose…. for some people, anyway… 😛

Which includes the part, I suppose, where this isn’t really a some days for most people… guess this one’s just for me and my life, after all, too. 😛

Post-a-day 2019

Peace of…

I went shopping for some jean shorts today… and it was kind of a total bust.

I ended up having a sort of miniature breakdown afterward, and had to keep reminding myself during it that I actually was fine.

None of the shorts fit – shorts with the same size on the label as one a other would prove to be way too small or way too big, and sometimes just a little too small…, but nothing fit me, and I felt so fat, especially in light of the fact that I’ve noticed the muscle building but the fat going nowhere since joining this gym.

I moved to the bluejean pants, because some of them are the same price, anyway, and I can cut them off easily to make shorts.

That, too, was rather busty, – think C’s instead of double D’s, though – though I tried on loads of them.

At one point, I was preparing to try on a pair of jeans that were the same brand as one of my favorite pairs of jeans during childhood… I wondered in I might be about to reclaim that relationship with the brand and jeans… I actually had duct tape all along the inside of the jeans, in strips and patches to seal and secure the many slits and holes that kept showing up throughout the crotch and butt area (because the fabric was just too thin).

I wondered if that rekindling was about to happen… and dropped that idea when they totally wouldn’t even go all the way on me…

Oh, well…

In the end, I enjoyed trying on shoes I ended up not getting (which I also enjoyed), I bought a pair of jeans (as pants/capris) that don’t necessarily look amazing on me but that make me super happy and fill me with joy whenever I see them, and I bought another pair of jeans that I plan to turn into shorts tomorrow, at which point I expect I will love them and be filled with joy at the sight of them, too. 🙂

I wore the real pants tonight, and French tucked my dress into them… I even got compliments on my outfit, it apparently looked so good to others… personally, I enjoyed it and I felt happy and comfortable and confident in it, and those are what I’m really looking for in an outfit, anyway…, but it is still nice to have that added bonus of praise from time to time. 😛

Totally.

Anyway… oh, I went dancing tonight – first time in probably eight or ten months… or 11 months, actually.., so, yeah… that was a good thing.

And I enjoyed myself doing that, too.

But it also reminded me that my plans to lose this excess fat are a great idea – despite all this exercise, it was still really tiring hauling myself around all evening, dancing. 😛

Anyway,.. goodnight!

Peace

Hannah

Post-a-day 2019

Gal Pals

In a comical and slightly intoxicated – truly only slightly on the one side, and then sober on the listening side – conversation between two girls (women) this past weekend, I heard the following line, delivered slightly like a five year old’s declaration of wanting her own birthday cake at someone else’s birthday party, from the girl who has a boyfriend:

I want a boyfriend who does the sex to me every day.

She then proceeded to say, “I really do,” in an effort to convince the sober, single friend who was laughing deeply beside her.

And no, English was not a foreign language for either – they were all too clearly native English speakers.

I think that’s part of what makes the silly statement so wonderful.

I am still laughing at the whole thing today, days after the fact, it was so odd and goofy…

😛

Post-a-day 2019

Opera…

… so dramatic…(!)

But I totally love it, and largely for its actually absurd level of drama – the characters in shows are just plain nuts… and, if you don’t think they are, just pay a bit closer attention to their words, and they’ll wind up nuts soon enough.

Seriously, though…. almost all the characters… in almost every show… 😛

It’s kind of great. 😀

Whenever my mom and I attend a Mozart opera, at some point in the performance – and it sometimes happens more than once, if the music makes it really too hard to resist the secret explosion – my mother leans over to me and whispers through slightly pursed lips, “Too many notes…”

She doesn’t mean it, of course – she is merely commenting on how clearly she can hear the amazing number of notes that happen in a matter of seconds in Mozart’s compositions.

And, of course, she does so by quoting Signore Salieri from the spectacular film “Amadeus”.

(If you haven’t seen it, watch it… if you have, feel invited to watch it again soon.) 😉

It always gives me a bit of crack up, while simultaneously bringing a sense of awe into the space: Mozart’s compositions truly are magical.

And the ‘too many notes’ thing really is magical, too, because, upon first listening, I never notice the hundreds of notes…, but, when I think of Salieri’s comment, I suddenly hear them all, flying about, going this way and that, like butterflies of all different colors, going in all directions, but somehow all painting a beautiful picture in front of you with their combined colors en masse… it’s like a Seurat with notes…

And I love it.

Post-a-day 2019

Hair

I had my hair cut today.

Actually, I had a whole lot of my hairs cut today… and voluntarily.

I’m extremely pleased with the result, though it somewhat freaks me out a bit… as though the person I see in the mirror is someone else from the person I saw every time before this evening.

The whole goal to the haircut was to step closer still to the person I want and long to be… and every time I take those steps, then tend to be quite scary… the fear of failure – and various tangents off of it, too – always makes me feel a bit wobbly as I take these steps, though they usually gain solid ground and confidence rather quickly once I actually take them.

So, with the hair, I’m still a bit wobbly on my feet, so to speak, but I am finding the ground to be increasingly solid and stationary, the more I allow myself to experience the panic and discomfort, and, therefore, to let it go.

And no, this is not over just a little haircut, just so you know – this was my hair this morning:

and this was the floor* after the haircut:

*Including the 18-inch section that I set down for the photo; hair that I am donating for wigs for cancer patients (yet again)

And my hair is not very thick, mind you… that’s a pile of an additional four and a half inches that came off after I relaxed a bit about it all, and I was ready for the real haircut and style to happen. 😛

That’s 22 and a half inches of hair for the longest parts, with the bulk of it being around 20 and a half inches long…

Kind of crazy, huh?

Post-a-day 2019

Education

I feel that one of the most valuable things that school could give a student at the time of the education (that is, while in school) is relevance and immediate applicability.

As we have been reading various books on utopias and dystopias in one of my classes this semester, so much of it all has become relevant in my life within a very short time of its initial introduction.  

The struggle one character has with God in this book, and how she finds change to be inevitable (and, therefore, God), applies to my life the week following my reading of it… I can relate to her struggle immediately, and then the change comes up in conversation and contemplation regarding my relationships with people in my life.

I think teachers, schools, curriculum planners aim to have books students read in school to be relevant to the students’ lives, but they often fall short of the mark… they miss the applicability of the ideas and actions somehow, and only assume that this specific struggle must be applicable to all students of this age… and it often isn’t.

From English class, we need concepts, ideas, brainstormed theories that we can learn to apply to any part of life…

For history class, a historical context would be only an enhancement of our understanding of what’s going on right now, what people are discussing from the news, and why it seems to matter so much… we hardly do more than regurgitate facts, and rarely know much about what they really were like or why it mattered to people who lived it (and therefore why it might matter to us).

I today was learning of a book about a man struggling in Russia, and, as I heard the details, I knew it was around the 1920s…, because of the Russian refugees in season four of “Downton Abbey”… there was a story in which I could invest myself, and ideas to which I could relate and from which I could draw my own ideas and conclusions, and the history just kind of stuck with the affinity for the people in the story…

I interested myself with the French Revolution recently, because I discovered the wonder of the film “The Scarlett Pimpernel”… and I remember details about the revolution because of how they connect with the story of the film and its characters.

The actual history became relevant and immediately applicable for me, because of my investment in the film.

The same is so with my investment in “Downton Abbey”.

How could I possibly relate to the Russian refugees or to the French upper class, when I merely read some statements of facts, names, locations, dates, and a summed-up given political meaning to it all?

I guess that’s why I remember just about nothing from my history classes in school…

Perhaps it everybody needs this kind of education, but everyone certainly could benefit greatly from it, I dare say.

You know what I mean?

Post-a-day 2019

Wowzer

I started today with lots and lots and lots of tears… and a decent amount of snot, too….

And then, as though I had just ended a long-term dating relationship, I finished crying, cleaned myself up, and spent the day with my mom, my eyelids weary and, ever so slightly, burning…. every mirror glance made it look as though I had just been crying, though I hadn’t cried since hours earlier…

I felt a heavy weight had lifted away from me, one I had very much grown accustomed to being ‘normal’… and the ghost of a weight still lingers, as though my emotional and psychological muscles are gushing back to normal size, the blood finally flowing through much more freely again, oxygen reaching the muscles fully, at last… and a certain sense of nervousness at what is to come from this openness, this space that had been so large and so occupied (and heavy) for so long…

And I can feel how much my everybody wants this rest that tonight has to offer me in this big and cozy bed at my mom’s house… I cannot quite imagine what tomorrow will bring, but I can sense that there will be a sort of ‘other side’ I will reach, come morning…

Although, this dog that just began barking next door… could be a problem here… when the neighbors first got him, months ago, he barked all night long for days… and I slept almost not at all, until the dog went hoarse from the barking, and I couldn’t hear it anymore……… oh, goodie(!) – he’s stopped.

Anyway, I await happily the person I will be not only free but able to be tomorrow.

Thank you, God, for today.

It was terrifying.

And I think I’ve been working toward it for quite some time now…

So, it is nice to have it somewhat handled, at last.

Thank you. 🙂

Post-a-day 2019