Just write (and more importantly, POST) it

Hi, nice to meet you, I HATE writing 😀

I absolutely hate writing. With a passion :) From responding to a work email to tweeting a reply back to a friend, writing, no matter how "quick", casual, or short form for me, is a manifestation of the word, “stress”, “exhaustion”, and “anxiety” all nicely blended together.

So you might be thinking, “Why the hell would post this then?” Well, simply and bluntly put, because I felt like it. It was just a very random thought on the subway after work yesterday the day before yesterday. I hate writing, but I KNOW for a fact that I will have to have to write everyday no matter what. Then, why should I continue this negative relationship with writing? If I learn to not hate writing, wouldn't life be a LOT more easier? So how do I do that….? Well, this blog is your answer. My thought was, I have to simply WRITE as much as I possibly can in order to get over that anxiety and fear. More on that later.

So, why do I hate writing?

It's mainly because my confidence decided to take a trip around the world and never come back. I always try to sound as if I am well put together, with writing which is of course grammatically correct, polite, and easy to read. So, if having to care about off of those things are making me stressed and feeling anxious, then why don't I simply start off by just not caring about grammar, redundancy, organization, topic, interestingness, catchy-ness, easy-to-read-ness and whatever-else-ness that would keep me from starting in the first place, and JUST POST. So for the first 100, or (maybe even all my blogs even, I have no idea because I haven’t thought of anything! 😀) please bear with me, as I'm confident that my writing will SUCK. I will say this upfront - I am going to religiously stick to the mindset, "that's okay, just have fun with this👍"

Let's rewind a bit.

I did say that I thought of this whole blogging thing randomly, but I of course did have inspiration to build off of, and that’s because my YouTube algorithm decided to reintroduce me back to Ali Abdaal’s productivity videos (hi Ali if you ever miraculously have the opportunity to read this! Love your videos!). So I believe I started watching Ali back when I was a student back in uni… but I can't remember things to save my life so I might be lying. But judging from the dates from his older videos that I very vaguely remember being uploaded, I think it was right around when I was working on my Masters in the UK………. right around when Covid started. But that’s another full course story, so I’ll save that for another occasion (I will add that to my Todoist).

Anyways, back to why I decided to start blogging.

This year, I am 29 going on 30. To those who have experienced this, or about to experience this, I think you’ll have a somewhat of an understanding of at least one of the things I’m experiencing now; anxiety, 焦り, confusion, excitement, fear, worry, overthinking, being overwhelmed, and the list continues. But what I mean to say is, this age of 30 is when I personally (finally) had the realisation that life is (extremely) short, and I only have so many years left to actually getting off of my ass and doing stuff.

I, like many of my cohorts who are professional procrastinators "put-offers," (I know we’re probably a good majority), am good at thinking, “Hm, why don’t I start a bilingual blog where I post all my entries in Japanese and English!” (setup the blog, never posted) or “How about I put my illustration skill im slowly developing to use and make pocket money from LINE stamps!” (made a few drafts, never finished it) and on and on and on, but never really following through with anything, because I hurled my standards waaaaaay too high. But as Ali says (couldn't find the exact video, but here's a similar one), your first 100 works (Ali says videos) will be BAD, so believe in quantity>quality and just START. If you're so fixated on the quality (*cough*), you'll never get anything done. In the actual video, he brings up Newton’s first law of motion, which describes this phenomenon perfectly. Things in motion will stay in motion and things not in motion will not move if you don’t put in the effort and energy.

So, very simply put…

This blog (for the time being) will essentially be a combination of a daily journal + place to organize my thoughts + a documentation of my (hopefully) growth. If you've taken the time and effort to read this far, thank you so so much for sharing some of your valuable time with me, I'm extremely grateful. Hopefully this blog was interesting in any way, shape or form, and if you're interested, I would love it if you following along with me for my journey😁

Even though this is my final paragraph,

I will introduce myself a little bit! Completely forgot about that. I'm 風 (I still haven't decided on how to read that… I'll get around to that sometime). I was born in Japan, raised in the US for all of my compulsory education, came back to Japan for university, worked a bit as a teacher in a rural area in Japan, went to the UK for my Master's, came back to Japan and began working for a company in the education industry, which is where I am now. I love plants, traveling, and trying out new things. I hope to share my thoughts, experiences, insights and whatever else pops into mind. 改めてよろしくお願いします！

Finally, (really)

If just ONE of my posts can be helpful for even ONE reader, all of this will have been worth it. But anyways, let's wrap this post up and I hope to meet you all in the next one.

Day 1, posted! 🌱

P.S.
Knowing myself, I'm pretty sure (if I continue this for a good amount of time) I'll probably come back to this very first blog. So, I think I'd like to add a short public letter to myself. Feel free to read if you're interested.

Hey, 元気？これ、やってよかった？どう？正直今の自分はそもそもこれが続いているのかどうかが気になって仕方がないよｗでもとりあえずやってみたよ。果たしてどうなっているのか(笑)この手紙をそのまま英語で書くつもりだったんだけど、気づいたら日本語で書いてたよね。たぶんまだ日本語で「他人」に書くことに対して自信が持てないのかね。いつか日本語で書いてみたいとは思っているけど。

このブログを書きながらふと思い出した。まだアメリカいて、地元の大学と日本の大学で悩んでいた高校3年生の時に、日本の大学はどんなものか、、、日本語がかなり怪しい帰国子女の自分が一人で帰国して、日本に住めるのだろうか、授業について行けるのだろうか。色々と不安だらけで。そんな時に、Wordpressかな？かどこかで自分が受かった大学の学生のブログを見つけて、ものすごく安心した記憶がある。「この人はこうしたんだ」「あれ、この人も帰国子女なの？」「帰国子女でも大丈夫なのか」そう思えただけですごく参考になったし、当時ものすごく勇気をもらえた。そして日本の大学に進学すること決意できた。

このブログがどんなものになるのかはわからないけど、ほんの少しでも誰かの役に立てればいいな、という気持ちと、何よりも楽しむ気持ちを常に持ち続けたいと思っています。

Looking forward to where the wind will take me from here. 

Good luck, love you lots.