Ore no atarashi ie

@2021/05/10 2:30 (UTC)

0X00

So have I mentioned that I have just moved from Texas back to Michigan? The reason for the move is complicated, but I think I am pretty satisfied with my new home: it is quite here, I slept much better than I had in Austin, and I now finally have my personal small office.

The move itself was pretty straight forward, I just had to pack everything before the movers came and had to unpack everything after I have arrived at my new apartment. But I did realize that I simply have too much stuff.

0X01

I blame my unintended discovery on the audio books that I have been listening to: Goodbye, things and The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. The exhaustion that I have been feeling when I was trying to organize my stuff is definitely not from my second shot of COVID vaccine.

Not only I have too much physical stuff, it seems that I have also collected more than 2 TiB of digital stuff as well, this discovery was made when I started my attempt to back up everything on an external hard-drive while organizing them in January, after five months I am glad to report that I gave up on trying to sort through the last 150 GiB worth of miscellaneous documents and forcefully stashed them in some random folders for future me to clean up.

The physical strain forced on me when I was sorting and organizing my physical stuff and the mental strain forced on me when I was sorting and organizing my digital stuff was no joke, for a moment I think I have lost my will to live and just want to discard everything that I currently have and start afresh. I think there is a reason that Fumio-san said that he rediscovered happiness when he started to lead a life of minimalism — less stuff means less attention that is required.

Demo do shiyou ka na? 😮‍💨, I have had no idea how much I have owned until I have moved into a new place across the states.

0X02

Another reason for my silent broke down is that I am still stressed out about me being diagnosed with diabetes just before my moving, that was just a hard punch to my fat, soft face. Being diagnosed with fatty liver should have alerted me of my health trend, yet I continued my journey on this self-destructive path, I guess I deserved it.

I think I am still salvageable, I think I would like to save myself from myself. I still have some dreams that are not realized, I still have so much thinks that I have not yet tried. I prized myself on being accepting, on willing to gain more experiences and on my diligence in learning and applying what I have learnt into my work.

And it is now time for me to gave my possessions up, so that I can finally focus on what matters to me most. It is funny how possessions ended up possessing me, which reminded me of a phrase that I've heard from my neighbor in middle school: "are you the one that is playing the game, or is it the game that is playing you?". Isn't it the golden line that describes most of the phenomenon that is around us all now? Like you use all these free services online and ended up being their cash cow constantly milked by the algorithms for it be advertisements or other nefarious influences.

I want to be a healthy happy naive young man that I should have been, free of the invisible chains that is around me.

0X03

After internal deliberation, I have reached an unanimous verdict, that my family must come first. I think as my parents' child, I have not gave enough back for my loving parents and my loving brother, for it be attention or support. I still remember my dream carved into my heart from when I was a kid, I wanted to bring my parents and my brother on a trip to all these foreign countries, and I wanted to gift my mother all the luxurious massages in the grand hotels in Maldives; I wanted to gift my father an expensive custom suit that are tailored and hand-made; and I wanted to gift my brother a fancy truck that he always wanted. I'm so sorry that after all these years I have not fulfilled any of these promises, that my parents are still working in their tiny shop from dawn to dusk, that my brother is still driving a beat-up van.

I know my parents have always, repeatedly, reminded me that I should put up my health in the first place, and that I have always confirmed that I understood their concerns, I still cannot do that after all. I am now officially placing this goal as my second priority, and in order to do this, as my mom and dad always put: "eat health, exercise every day, sleep early...", they are absolutely right, and I absolutely need to follow these ~~instructions~~ recommendations. At the back of my mind, I still believe that if I wanted to I can always achieves this goal with ease, now is it the time for me to verify my theories in real life? I think so.

And last but not least, productivity. English words, in my opinion, are just like Chinese words, in the fact that one word can mean countless things under different context. In this sense, by "productivity", I meant so many aspects of my life. I am a lazy person, and some times are greedy when I must have two or more of the same items otherwise I would dream about them in tears.

The first and foremost meaning is that I want to be a productive and efficient worker for my company, I am endlessly grateful for my company who took me in and valued me and my life; I am endlessly grateful that I have only encountered the best of colleagues that there are, who are polite, respectful, considerate and helpful. So it is only natural that I want to be a more productive member of this community.

The second is that I want to be productive in my day-to-day life as well. So far most of my off work time is dedicated to manga, anime, light novels and other streaming services. I want to efficiently utilize these time to do things that are actually meaningful. It is my experience that my means of "relaxing" by watching TV is not relaxing at all, my brain is constantly running and at the end of my night I just felt more tired that I started. I can't believe that I am going to say goodbye to motion pictures, who taught me so much in how to speak English well, from whom I occasionally pick up a phrase or two of Japanese and Spanish language.

The third is that I want to be productive in friendships and relationships. Not that anyone would read this, but I loudly proclaim that I suck at being a friend. To the people that consider(s) me friend, I apologize that I didn't have enough initiative to strike up a leisure-time convo, I must have faded from your memories. It certainly would be nice if I just could be more active and have some people to confide to.

0X04

Who would have thought writing a blog, or a diary, would help me? I should have trusted Dr. Watson's psychiatrist. It feels like that I have offloaded some of my stress into the atmosphere, and I just woke up feeling refreshed, hopefully I am able to keep it up, and follow through my plan of updating myself one letter at a time.

Besides ranting into nothingness (more like writing to someone in a drifting bottle), I think my next todo is to discard items one at a time, for it be material or digital. After all I do really think that KonMari Methods and Fumio Tips are worth trying and might actually help me to eventually lead a more content life. I think it applies to me when they said that the thinks you hold onto will only drags you down, the less is on my mind, the more I could do.

0XFF

From a movie you may know:

May the odds be ever in your favor.

From the awesome SQLite source code:

May you do good and not evil. May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others. May you share freely, never taking more than you give.