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A real weekend Sunday September 24
I had my first real, true, absolute weekend. You see, since the beginning of August, I have spent every weekend looking for apartments, looking at apartments, visiting realtors, deciding apartments, packing things, moving things, moving things, moving things, moving even more things, and then cleaning the old joint that I haven't taken a full weekend to just do, well, whatever.
So long, in fact, that I think I had forgotten how to take a whole day to myself, doing either nothing, or only doing the things I wanted to do on the spur of the moment. My work is anything but routine, but my hours are. This is what it means to work at an office. When I was doing freelance work, I made my own hours. True, there were times that I'd do nothing and enjoy a sunny afternoon. There were also times where I'd work overnight to finish a key functionality.
I view routine as killer because it makes time seem to go fast. We have but short lives on this planet, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let anything make my already-short life feel even shorter.
However, at the same time, there are some things that I want to achieve very much, and I am confronted with the reality that routine practice is the only thing that will allow these things to come to fruition. Let us take "sit-ups" as an example. Or "kanji". Two things I wish I did more of. I will shoot the first commenter to suggest that I study kanji while doing sit-ups.
Anyway, I didn't really get anything done this weekend. Sure, I did the essentials: laundry, dried out my futon, made a killer Saturday-morning breakfast. But that's not the point.
The point is that for two months, "moving" was my project. I couldn't rest because there was always something to do for the big "move". Now that the move is out of the way, I spent a weekend with time to myself. I went to Denny's (which is good in Japan).
At Denny's, I pulled out my notebook, and I began to write the things that I want to do. I'd like to keep in better touch with my friends; this is something I've been poor at since starting my job. I want to write on this blog more; another thing I've let fall to the side at times. I want to pass the first-level Japanese language test this December. In an ideal world, I'd have washboard abs.
I had a little deal with Yuiko last month: she was cracking jokes at the expense of my midsection, and we made a little bet. I told her that if I put my mind to it, I could have washboard abs (the ever-famous six-pack) in a month. She said, "well, why don't you, then?" She had me.
Well, a month came and went, and I just didn't put the effort in. I tried a little bit, but the aforementioned move "took all of my time". It'd be a lie to say that it took "all" of my time. What I should say is that it took all of my idle processing capability. I couldn't focus on anything as long as that loomed on the horizon.
But there's always something on the horizon. Now it's the Japanese language proficiency test. Maybe next it will actually be the abs. Who knows. The point I'm making here is that I am a project person, but at the very same time, I am not a project person. I am very good at focusing on one thing and doing that thing, but multitasking is harder for me. It's something I need to learn to get better at.
I am not alone though; I talked with the girlfriend on the phone tonight about this very topic. Her thoughts?
"Women are just naturally better at multitasking," she said. "Whereas men are better at just focusing on one thing."
For those of you who have ever opened Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars, allow me to just borrow the metaphor that men are Mr. Fix-Its and women are the Home Improvement Committee. What a surprise that she owns a copy. Damn memes.
Living in Shibuya Wednesday September 6
I now live in Shibuya. I am still paying rent on my Yokohama apartment until the week after next, but that's just the way it goes. It's actually nice to have an overlap that allows me to gracefully move my things between the locations. Coming from a college town, where most leases end days before new ones start, this is quite an upgrade. Damn college landlords.
The other nice point about Shibuya is that it gives a frame of reference to everyone I know outside of Japan about my neighborhood. Point-of-view shots of the big hill leading to my apartment in Yokohama don't make it into major motion pictures. The Shibuya intersection shots do (Lost in Translation, for one; I'd call on my friend Drew to help me with other references that I may be missing).
Moreover, there are models living in the apartment beneath me. I'm not kidding. There are at least two of them, but we think there may be three. According to my one roommate, the flat is rented out by an agency, and they rotate the models every now and then just to keep those of us in the room above appeased. I'm sure it's all for our benefit.
Don't even get me started about how great it is to leave 40 minutes before work and still get there on time. That sounds like a bit of time, but coming down from 1:15 minutes is quite, quite nice. More pictures and whatnot to follow later this week.
