Back in the USA, it is Thanksgiving Day, the one day in the year I basically ever get homesick. I don’t care much at all about holidays. Thanksgiving is the one that’s tricky, though, as growing up that’s always a day we’d see extended family. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. The house and the refrigerator would be bursting at the seams with guests and food, respectively.
Here in Japan, though, it’s just a normal Thursday. I probably won’t even call home to talk to people, like I used to do. Over the years, the distance between us all has grown. Or, put more accurately, the distance between everyone else and me has grown, primarily because of the decision I first made back in the summer of 2009 to move abroad.
It’s not that the love isn’t there. It’s not that I or anyone else doesn’t care. It’s just a sad fact that, when you move to another continent, you just don’t see people much at all any more. I have young cousins I’ve never met, new spouses in the family whose names I have difficulty remembering, and relatives whose memorial services I only saw summed up in forwarded emails.
Perhaps it sounds callous, but after a while, you grow accustomed to the distance. And, fortunately, that distance also closes beautifully on the rare occasion I do make it back for a visit. The last time that happened was 2017, though, long enough ago I had to go check the date to make sure. And who knows when the next time will be, what with the difficulty starting my business and the absurd JPY/USD exchange rate. It’ll happen eventually, but who knows how many wedding anniversaries I’ll have accumulated with my wife before then. As it is, it seems likely my parents will have new grandkids before they actually meet her for the first time.
This is the part where I begin to zero in on the negative and lose sight of the positive. It is my nature, at least some of the time, to focus on the difficulties, the problems to solve, the things in the way. This, instead of focusing on what’s good, the solutions I’ve found, the things I’ve already got going on.
But today is Thanksgiving day. And no, I’m not about to go off on a listing spree, enumerating all the many things for which I am thankful. I have done a bit of that today, privately, and I will do more. But I have other good reasons to focus on the positive today and to do my best to propagate more of it.
It’s an absolutely beautiful day outside, for one thing. Not a cloud in the sky, and it’ll get up to about 18ºC (64 freedom degrees) later. Unseasonably warm, yes, and the same can be said for much of the year, but I’m going to enjoy the weather instead of catastrophizing about climate change. And I’m going to go apply for a few jobs, stop by the employment office, and try to get at least one booking for a photo workshop this weekend.
It remains that I’m not very good at sales, at getting people to buy into what I’m doing, no matter how much I believe in it. But I’ll figure it out. That’s what I do. I figure shit out. Not always gracefully, but I do it.
Between 2009 and 2015, I made five international moves. I figured shit out and made it work. I’ve been a successful freelancer in the past, and I’ll do it again. Because, as much as I feel like giving up sometimes, that’s not something I do.
I know, fundamentally, that I have a lot of value to offer the world, and while I haven’t yet figured out how to get that value in front of the people that can benefit from it, at least not in a way that’s sufficiently compelling (so says the lack of sales), you never know when things are going to begin to shift. Could be next month, could be next week. Could be today.
So off I go into the day now, happy for the beautiful weather, unwilling to let my fears rule my outlook. I’m going to make today a good day, and can’t nobody stop me.
