Rest and Go

I flew back home for Thanksgiving. Wife was not able to join me this time, but it was good to be able to see the family. It was a good chaotic time as it always is. I had my fill of egg nog, which I had attempted to make a week or two before and it came out more like bad pudding. Most of the house managed to get sick the week of Thanksgiving including me. I did manage to hit a lot of the good foods that I miss. A good burger, Pho¹, BBQ, that pineapple stuffing my sister in law makes for Thanksgiving. Spent the night at my best friends house (before the sickness kicked in, but I might have given it to his kids). I watched the first 15 minutes of K-Pop Demon Hunters 3 times while hanging out with his kids. Still haven’t seen beyond that yet. The kiddos wanted to do a sword fight or wanted to play a different game instead. It was fun. The plane ride back to Japan with a cough was not. It seemed like the cough and all that was getting better, but I think the plane ride made it worse. It became a fever a couple days later. At least it wasn’t flu or covid.

Before I left for my trip, I put in my notice for my company. I had been with them for just over 4 years. The subject matter of the company is possibly the most interesting that I may ever have the opportunity to work with. But it was time for me to move onto something else. My work after I got back from the Thanksgiving trip was help see through a critical period of a project and then spend as much time as possible on documentation and knowledge transfer. We had a year end party and I then took the rest of my PTO after that which gave me a good chunk of time to rest before the new job started after the new year.

A friend – who had moved to Japan this last year – wanted to experience their first hatsumode, and asked to do it with us. S is not particularly huge on it. She’s had her fill of flu-inducing Hatsumode, so we waited a few days to do it. I’ve done Hatsumode more with my previous coworkers than I had done it with family². Despite not going on the first of the year, it was still quite busy. We first grabbed lunch at a Vietnamese restuarant³ then we waded through the crowd. We did our bow-bow-clap-clap-bow then headed back the other direction down the same crowded street grabbing some baby castellas on the way. It was a lovely time.

Next day, the new job started. Since I am planning on staying in Japan for the time being, when looking for the new job I wanted to find a place that was going to further my Japanese speaking ability. Finding a job at the right language level is a challenge. A position that exposes me to more opportunities to use it. I am happy so far with the chances I am getting to speak it and listen to it. When I go to bed, my dreams lately have been like scrubbing through a video. My brain trying to process what in the world just happened that day. There’s a bit more people at this company, but it’s also not too large. More opportunities to put what I’ve learned into practice. I’m excited to get going with this.

I picked up Stephen King’s On Writing. The first segment is what he calls his C.V. It was like a bunch of snapshots of his life that led him to becoming a writer. They were good little snippits of stories of his life. That section of the book made me want to go read more of his stuff. I watched Haven some years ago and enjoyed it’s sort of Smallville/monster of the week thing. It was very loosely based off of Stephen King’s Colorado Kid. It’s a short book that with the additional train time that the new job provides me I was able to knock out quickly. I also picked up The Shining. I haven’t seen the movie, but I know the name. No idea what to expect.

While I haven’t done a whole lot of drawing over the holiday season, I have been doing a lot more journaling. Restarted my 750 words. I picked up a Traveler’s Notebook. I was trying to decide between some hobonichi notebook or traveler’s. I am giving the traveler’s a shot. It’s nice leather cover with a few paper fills. But until I knock out the last dozen pages of my current Leuchtturm, it’s just notes on new blog design ideas. Then will probably start using it as my normal journal. Fun stuff. I got a new Chinese fountain pen to try out as well. It doesn’t fit well into my iroshizuku bottle⁴ which is a bit of a pain to fill it up with ink. But it holds a lot of ink and doesn’t seem to dry out as quickly as my Lamy. I did a bit of journaling last year in my physical notebooks, but not a whole lot on the computer. Doing 750 words on the computer translated very well into blog posts for me in the past. I want to do more blogging this year if I can swing it with the new job. Blogging leads to connections with people a little more than just writing thoughts in a notebook. Will attempt both, but we’ll see where I end up spending my time. Hope you’re doing well. Happy new year.