A strange weekend indeed

Things are not going exactly the way I want them to. Specifically Saturday was a terrible day for me. Which is quite ironic, because it was probably the best weather I've seen for the whole year. Clear blue sky, wonderful temperature. Great weather for photography, had I been in the mood. But I wasn't. 

I had my first 'jinshin jikkou' experience. Jinshin jikkou is what Japanese train companies call it when someone decides to commit suicide by jumping in front of a train. Fortunately I didn't see it happen because it happened to the train in front of me, but my train was still delayed for half an hour.

Being bored in the train, I had a weird thought: I can judge my happiness based on whether I mind sitting in the train for a long time. This may sound strange, but it seems to make sense in my head. I take the train to Tokyo almost every weekend. It takes about 40-50 minutes. Whenever I feel happy and at peace with life I find something to do and enjoy the ride, even when the train is crowded like crazy. But when I'm unhappy or restless I cannot find the patience to wait and I get annoyed by the time it takes to reach my destination. In this fashion I also associate a certain feeling with certain stations on the train line towards Tokyo. For some stations I have a lot of fond memories and I would go there again, but some stations I avoid because there's a lot of bad memories there. 

Side note: I still love Japan though. I took a walk around the Kawasaki area not expecting to find anything of interest, but I ran into a very local festival where a lot of old Japanese ladies were dancing in the streets in their kimonos. It was very surreal. When I arrived they were just about finished. I managed to take a couple of (crappy)  pictures and walked onward towards the station. Walking is good for concentration.

Right brain versus left brain. Specifially: concentrating really hard on something versus seeing the big picture. Tunnel vision versus wide angle lens. I've always liked wide angles, but the people around me are all submerged in a tunnel vision of their own life. All they think about is studystudystudy or jobjobjob. I don't think that's good at all. I'm not claiming that all wide-angle is good either, because I know my life is too one-sides as well. Lately I haven't accomplished anything because I'm unable to concentrate on anything. My mind wanders and I'm unable to concentrate really hard. I can accept this because I just had a period of one month where I was able to completely submerge myself in a single task at work, and I loved it. Now is my wide-angle period. I do need to get stuff done, though, so I'm going to exercise a bit more. Exercising brings my brain down and makes it easier to focus on one thing, cause my brain's too tired to hold in many things at once. 

I want to change my life. I think I'm too free. Nobody tells me what to do, nobody even suggest me what to do. Positive as I am, I think this means that I'm free to do whatever I want. If I was a pessimist I might think nobody cares about my life enough to push me in any direction. Fortunately I'm not a pessimist. Anyway, I need to do something to make my life less fun. I need more discipline. I am going to have to tell myself to do more things that I don't like. This could be anything: from cleaning my bathroom to studying Japanese. I just need that little bit of tunnel vision to help me focus.

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