Shenanigans

I find that writing ideas flowed much more freely when I was an unemployed college student.

Now that I don’t play Nintendo games on weekday afternoons, or B&E into institutional buildings, for fun my textual musings seem a little more serious and a little less shenanigan filled.

As such, I should probably start plotting more shenanigans. However, I have two reservations. 1) making my employers look bad and 2) being deported.

I can’t imagine being deported is a one time event.

This is probably how it would go trying to return to Japan, after having been deported:

Japanese Immigration Officer: “Um…sir, you were deported, I can’t let you back into the country”.

Me: “Oh…”

Japanese Immigration Officer: “Sir…um…Sir, are those ninja stars in your hand?”

Me: “….maybe”

Japanese Immigration Officer: “……”

Me: “Sooo….can you at least send me somewhere else in Asia?”

Japanese Immigration Officer: “No, sir, I cannot. And  I’m afraid you’re going to have to come with me.””

-end scene-

So, based on my fears I’ve devised a few rules for my hijinks.

Rule #632 for Shenanigans: Don’t get caught.

Rule #633 for Shenanigans: Do no (permenent) harm.

Rule #634 for Shenanigans: Always have accomplice.

Rule #635 for Shenanigans: If caught, blame accomplice.

That’s all for now.

Personal Correspondence

Well, well, well, it’s been quite a while. Again.

I’ve become rather consistent at being inconsistant.

I couldn’t say if it’s the general busyness of life or some manifestation of my innate procrastination habits.

I’m banking on a hybrid of both.

That being said, let’s get to the meat and potatoes of this posting. (Although, they often say “one man’s meat is another man’s poison”. I promise I won’t poison anyone on purpose.)

————-

Since moving to Japan, I have found that I get the most hand written, personal correspondence from two sources:

1) Older relatives and friends of the family.

2) Friends in America (in spite of my neglect and overall terribleness at keeping in touch.)

In this post, I’m mostly going to focus on the older relatives and friends of the family.

The two main culprits in this category are my grandma and the pastor’s wife from the church that I grew up in and called subsequently called grandma.

Now, I’ve done a pretty good job keeping in touch with (biological) Grandma (and Grandpa.)

I call them at least once a month. My reasons aren’t complicated. It’s mostly because I love my Grandparents. But I have to say, a close second is excited Grandma is to talk to me. Living in Japan has become business as usual to me, but apparently still looks pretty awesome on the outside.

Don’t even get me started on the street cred that Grandma gets at her quilting guild because I live in Japan. The crazy “Japanese” fabric [made in China] that I got her last Christmas must have been very envy inducing.

I see it as a “My grandson is a DOCTOR” sort of phenomenon. Apparently, there aren’t any grandson Doctors represented in the guild. To me, that seems to be a little bit more of an accomplishment than simply living somewhere far away.

But, per usual, I have digressed.

The second Grandma, the pastor’s wife, I see very irregularly. Only once or twice in the past few years. And yet, she continues to sent me letters, with updates and encouragement.

So, this got me to thinking.

I kind of just take these letters in and appreciate that people are thinking of me. But shy of the phone calls to Grandma, I haven’t really been reciprocating. I think this is childish behavior. That sort of receptive mode that is acceptable for children, is in turn, irresponsible for adults. I think it is prudent to give in addition to receiving.

They don’t have to be full of feelings, and gooey what nots like the Grandmas letters are admittedly famous for. In this case, I think it really is the thought that counts.

Real adults, real men, send letters when they need to. Because it is important to value people in a way that they will understand and appreciate.

(and Grandma doesn’t have e-mail)

Minimalism

Well, I’m sorry.

Can I get that out of the way? I’ve neglected Zeus Thaber again.

But at least my range of neglected hobbies, anywhere from journaling to amateur photography, make for good company. (On cold nights I can still hear them screaming for attention.)

Truth be told, I’d sell them, but they are pretty laden with emotional value. The camera is about 35 years old, my Mom used it in college. What kind of monster would sell that? And the journal, it has more than a years worth of cultural transition journal entries. Plus, who buys someone else’s journal journal?

But I would argue that a camera and a book aren’t really cluttering up my life in a disruptive sort of way. There are times where a certain item is impossible to throw away. You know the excuses, “But I might use it someday”, “But it brings back such good memories”, etc etc.*

I used to be guilty of this.

I remember when these kind of thoughts started to decline. It was the first time I came to Japan, and in order to raise the money to pay for the trip. I was selling anything that wasn’t nailed down.

In the frantic, garage-sale-esqe countdown, I realized several things:

A) I didn’t play the bass guitar anymore. (I only kept it around because it made me feel cool.) **see note below
B) Pawn shops aren’t very generous.
C) Knickknacks, and anything resembling them, are terrible.
D) If someone won’t give you money for an item, and you don’t know why you still have it, said item probably isn’t worth keeping.

So, for me it came down to stuff, our complicated, co-dependent relationship with stuff.

Naturally, I wanted to see if anyone else questioned this zany relationship with stuff.

I think you’d be surprised at how gigantic the movement against stuff has become.

One of my favorite blogs on minimalism is written by a guy who, on occasion, strikes me as a crazy-ass idealist.*** But at the same time, he puts the movement into very coherent and eloquent terms, that have really spoken to me.

Here is a quote from his book.

“A minimalist eschews the mindset of more, of acquiring and consuming and shopping, of bigger is better, of the burden of stuff. A minimalist instead embraces the beauty of less, the aesthetic of spareness, a life of contentedness in what we need and what makes us truly happy.”

“A minimalist values quality, not quantity, in all forms.”

How does that not sound good?

But…there is always a downside, right?

The concept of minimalism on a personal level can be taken, commercialized, and packaged conveniently for sale.

Want to be minimalist, but still want to keep all your stuff? We can help with that, and all you have to do is follow our system and we will organize all that clutter.

Remember:
Organized clutter =/= Minimalism
I guess the point is to find what works for you. I’ve been trying to do that for a while now, and I think it would be best described as a work in progress.

 

 

 

* check out http://unclutterer.com/, they had a good article about cutting the strings on hobbies and their associated clutter

** totally cool anyway, regardless of rock instruments involved.

*** http://www.mnmlist.com/, look for the articles on planning and communal living

Being Serious is Hard – Part 2

I was thinking today on what I wrote in “Being Serious is Hard – Part 1”. If we look beyond the obvious proofing errors and terrible writing style, I think there were some valuable keys to unlocking the psyche that is Zeus Thaber. (please pardon the awesome pseudonym.)

I have found the following things to be true:

1.  Sometimes I really can’t be serious when the situation calls for it. There is an element of my personality that gets stuck in lighthearted mode. It can often take a jump start from a ‘beyond normal circumstances’ moment to push me into seriousness.

2.  By putting up this affective barrier, I am being a selfish person. Not only am I denying those around me from experiencing the whole spectrum of my character, but I am also denying myself from experiencing the same in others.

While I am having to be more serious these days, perhaps I shouldn’t see it as such a bad thing. I recall writing in a draft of the first post that, “the pressure of this seriousness weighs on my heart like a load of lead bricks.”

First, we should all note how terribly melodramatic that sounds. Which is probably why it didn’t make it into what we will affectionately refer to as a ‘final draft’. Though it might also be important to note that I really did feel like that. It was a genuine toss up between posting it here or on myspace, right after the posts about how ‘my parents don’t understand me’, how ‘I can’t stop giggling in class’ and ‘omg, LOL!1!!, you have to take this personality quiz!’.

But I have digressed.

I think all of the seriousness floating around felt like a load of bricks for the same reason that the bar feels heavy the first time a person goes to the gym. They aren’t used to being able to deal with that much weight. So, metaphorically speaking, my lighthearted muscles are overdeveloped, and my serious muscles are languishing as a result.

So, I wondered about myself juxtaposed against the people that are habitually serious, and if it means that all the responsibility rests with me?

I say it doesn’t. It was a ridiculous assumption to assume that it did. What responsibility does rest with me is in successfully maintaining a balance between lightheartedness and seriousness. And more importantly, being able to discern when a situation calls for one or the other. Anyone else’s perceivable lack of balance should be my last concern.

Ok, that’s all.

Being Serious is Hard – Part 1

And in this case, I’m being very serious.

While I would really like to blame the month of September, as this was when I started noticing the serious-ing of things, I’m pretty sure that seriousness, realistically speaking, has been around far longer than that.

Please, don’t get me wrong, I think can be serious when the situation calls for it (or so I say). Admittedly, there are some people could probably argue that I’m lying to myself. There might be a seed of truth there.

Yes, there are things that demand my attention, my ‘serious’ attention. I’m not talking about global hunger, war, nuclear proliferation, or whatever. But things on which my attitude has an impact, things that reside on a personal level. These issues can be heavy problems, but frankly I’d rather err on the side of lightheartedness than taking them to the terribly serious extreme that others seem to find so immediately necessary.

How can the antonym of serious be lighthearted and the antonym of lighthearted be miserable?

For me being lighthearted is being unfettered. I think being truly serious with someone is probably one of the most direct forms of interpersonal intimacy. Is it understandable that when things start to get serious, I start to feel a little trapped (tell me that isn’t a sign of some relational defect). For example, when someone wants to talk to me about a serious matter, it makes me uncomfortable that I feel obligated to, even if I don’t feel close enough to them for something like this to happen.

If my over-lightheartedness, or a certain level of superficiality, are not valid behavior practices, then what about the serious ones? Does all the responsibility rest with me?

or maybe we balance each other out.

*shrug*

More later.