a moment of clarity

Tokyo is a noisy place, both in a normal, physical sense, and in an intellectual sense. It’s noisy in my head, here in Tokyo. But last week a simple and small moment of clarity that I had been waiting for a long time, unpretentiously without fanfare or warning, found me.

Between the rattling trains zooming by my apartment and the memorization of their endless schedules, between the giggling of the uniformed school girls and the unsettled memories of when that was me, between the endless announcements seeking the capitalize on Mother’s Day and my resentment toward every reminder, between the blaring children’s songs and the thousand Japanese characters that I’m trying to form in to a language, for one moment everything went quiet and I could hear myself. My life came into focus.

and it was obvious to me that it was finally time to quit my job. It’s time to change my life so I can stay sane and healthy. it’s time to do it now.

there are lots of little reasons and they all just added up and now I’m on the job hunt. so far doing well.

I’m not quitting till I find another job and I’m going about it slowly and carefully. Basically I want a job that pays the same or better.
A job that doesn’t require me to work later than 6 (or 7 at a stretch) so that I can take martial arts and Japanese lessons at night. This is my chance to become fluent in Japanese, but I can’t do it at this job. Also, I realized that most satisfying times in my life corresponded with either martial arts and/or dance lessons at night. learning something physical will go really far towards keeping me sane.

the complete lack of job security has destroyed my loyalty to the company. it feels like I’ll have to leave eventually anyway. the question is if it’ll be on my terms or the whim of head office.

I also really resent that it is in my best interest to lie constantly about how much I work so that the company doesn’t have to pay into the national social insurance scheme. It’s one thing to work hard and have someone give you kudos for it. It’s completely different for the company to act like you are just stupid for needing more than 10 min to prepare, set-up and clean up each class. If I’m working hard for someone I want it recognized and at least verbally rewarded. the system is crap and, quiet simply, doesn’t work for me.

there are other things like the commute and my particular trainer blah blah, but it’s mainly the schedule and the insecurity. so it’s time to change my life.

and the dust has settled in all the turmoil and noise of Tokyo so that for the first time I feel like I have the courage to do it. wish me luck.

I’m sorry I haven’t felt like writing much lately. one reason is that I’ve recently made more friends and so I’m talking to friends more, which leads to less writing. I’ll try and keep posting as exciting things happen though. and as get through resizing my picture of Korea.

wish me luck on the hunt!