Just not worth it

You know? I think I’m done drinking for a while. Back in college I drank too much. Way too much. I drank more in a single weekend than a lot of people drink in the course of several months. I made good use of my strong, young liver and kidneys.

I’m not in that environment any more, though, and a lot of things are changing. Among them, my desire to consume alcohol. I still dig a beer now and then, but if I ever really got anything out of feeling the effects of alcohol, I no longer do. I no longer enjoy being drunk, and I sure as hell don’t like being hungover.

I think it’s time to part ways with alcohol for the most part. I’m sure I’ll have a beer once in a while, but for now I think I’ll run dry and see how it goes. If nothing else, I’ll sure as hell be a lot more productive on Saturday mornings.

Does anyone have any tips for studying a language on one’s own? I desperately need to start studying Japanese seriously again and I’m having trouble finding a good approach to it. On a good day, I’ll spend 20 minutes randomly flipping through my old notes quasi-quizzing myself on things. Not totally useless, but not a particularly good way to expand one’s breadth of knowledge and skill in a foreign language.

In other news, there’s a chance I might be getting a full time job. A pretty good one at that. It’s only a maybe thing right now and I’m not going to provide any more details than that, but keep your fingers crossed for me and hope that I get it.

I have a new plan now for Japan. Come September I will download and subsequently complete an application for the JET Programme. Following this, I will apply to a few other programs as well as backups. With luck, I get in and next spring some time I get off this continent. In the mean time, I sell off some old gear I’m not using to help rid myself of my debt, I work my ass off, I study Japanese. I will work on new photography in my spare time and hopefully have a strong new body of work to take with me when I leave for Japan.

I will not stress out about this, though. It occurs to me that this is a lot more doable than I seem to let myself think most of the time. Not only that, but the more people I talk to about it, the more I realize that this is the time when I really should be traveling, when I really should be getting the fuck out of dodge and just enjoy life in the world through direct experience.

And now I’m going to go work on my bike. I don’t know if I’ll ride today, since I feel like shit, but if nothing else I think I’ll go get some red nail, polish and try to touch up some chipped paint on my frame.

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