Tag: goals

Mystery music with unexpected friends

I recently made a new friendship with someone. We got along like friends the first moment we interacted with one another. When we first spent time together, not long after that first meeting, I discovered that she, too, rarely arranged to spend time with people unless she really likes them, and feels they are genuine with themselves.

She and I have been in touch via phone, both message and conversation, off and on, and have attended yoga together, and seen one another in passing since then. For several weeks now, almost since the first time we were arranging to spend time together, I have had this pull, this desire, to create a song with her. I don’t know what it is about her, but it just keeps coming up that we need to write a song, possibly songs, together. And so, rather than casually mention it, I told her about how this idea keeps coming up, and I asked for her thoughts – would she create a song with me?

Her reply was that, though she ‘can’t sing to save her life,’ she would create a song with me, Hannah Banana. 😛

And so we shall begin this song pull, now. I am quite excited. I think and I feel that something huge and beautiful will come of this.

Post-a-day 2021

^ Still got it wrong at first, but caught it before saving!

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

Slightly a mess

I don’t do well with “storing things”. Winter sweaters or not-so-often-used items that usually are stored away, perhaps in a closet or the back of a shelf, usually end up staying in the back of that closet or shelf for me. Even when I need them, want them, the hassle of pulling them out and finding a new, daily use spot for them is usually too great for me to make the effort. Plus, I tend to forget about them. I meander around my clothes, bummed and uncomprehending why I cannot seem to find clothes that I love for the current weather. I notice that I need the heavy sweater as I am on my way out. at that point in time, I am ready to leave, and do not mentally or physically want to spend the time to pull out the big sweaters. So, I find the easiest-to-reach one that will get me by in the day, and head out the door. If I remember later – and that’s a big “if” – when I am back home and not busy, I might rearrange to put the heavy sweater box into an easily accessed spot. But it usually takes me a couple months of needing them consistently to do that.

I know, I know: it is rather ridiculous. But I’m not doing it intentionally, necessarily. It kind of just happens that way, and I am noticing it right now as I contemplate why I never seem to wear all my cool sweaters in Fall and Winter (aside from the fact that our temperatures change constantly from cold to hot to cool, even on a single day, here in Houston).

But I also notice it with other things. If my guitar is in a case, I will pull it out rarely. If it is sitting out on a stand, I will grab it and play it regularly, and often. Basically, I guess I just use what is out, easily accessed. If it is put away or hard to reach, I tend not to use it unless using it is a necessity.

Keeping that in mind, I think a sort of room organization overhaul is coming soon…

Especially considering that I will be getting back an awesome chair and ottoman that I had lent to my cousin year ago, when I moved to Japan for a while. I would like to have a functional space that includes the chair and ottoman, anyway, so some rearranging needs to happen for that already. And the sewing machine and its table… forgot about that again… haha

Post-a-day 2020

Working it out…?

I am going to test out my old gym this coming week, and see how it goes, how I like it all. I am nervous both that I will like it and that I will not like it. If I like it, I still will have to figure out whether I want to find a way to make it work to go there again, despite the super high price now. If I don’t like it, I will have to get myself sorted in entirely doing workouts at home for the future. While I trust that I can do that, I do not want to do that. That’s a lot of alone time for something I prefer to have as a social situation.

So, we shall see… fingers crossed that, no matter the experience this next week, I am complete about how it goes and about how to move forward with and from the experience.

And now, I must sleep, as my alarm will be going off at five, because sign-ups open 24 hours before the start of the class… and they have very limited capacities…, and I need to attend the 5:15am class. Ugh. So, I’m getting up at five not even for a workout, but to sign up for a workout. Totally ridiculous, I agree. 😛

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

Rest and Weather

I feel like the weather is kind of really getting to me lately. You see, I can handle cold weather and hot weather both, just so long as I can be in charge of my indoor temperatures. Lately, the weather has been going back and forth between warm-ish and really cold (in the twenties Celsius to just above freezing). Unfortunately, between work and my mom’s house, I have not had reliable temperatures indoors anywhere. No matter how I have approached it, I never seem to predict appropriately what the indoor temperatures will be, and so end up slightly miserable while at either location for longer periods of time. In my own home, I hav even fine. But I haven’t spent the bulk of my waking hours in my own home lately.

And so, with that physical semi-misery comes a certain level of both conscious and subconscious stress. And, with that stress and the unexpected cold indoor temperatures, I feel like I am getting sick. And it sucks. All I want to do is take a super fast shower and then curl up in bed and sleep for ten hours. But I have to be up to work in about nine hours from now, so I likely won’t get more than eight to sleep. And only that much if I somehow manage to go back to sleep when I inevitably wake up around 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning, as almost always now. (Another factor in my feeling terrible, as I haven’t gotten enough sleep lately, especially due to the fact that I can’t stay asleep during the time I have available for sleeping.)

Anyway, lots of frustration and stress lately and right now, and all I want to do, I can’t really do. But we shall see how quickly I can get myself to bed right now, and then how I feel in the morning. I really hope I crash asleep tonight, and then wake refreshed and well tomorrow morning. I and the world around me need it(!). I actually broke down in miserable crying tonight before driving home from my mom’s, I was so tired and stressed.

But, starting after tomorrow, the days will be increasing in length again, and I am grateful for that.

Post-a-day 2020