Oh no

I've got this sinking feeling I made a biiig mistake.

All the reasons I had for deciding to come back after one year now seem so shallow. What my reasoning boiled down to was the desire to have the freedom to do anything I might want - maybe live in Latin America, maybe do music in L.A., do research in libraries to figure out what to do next with my education - without being locked into another year-long contract. I thought, perhaps naively, that, 'Hey, lots of people live their whole lives doing jobs they don't love. Since I know I don't want to be an English teacher, I might as well move on and start looking for a job I can be passionate about right away.' But what I eventually came to realize over the next couple of months was that I actually love the job I have right now. I love the kids I work with everyday with a love I've never known before. By now, it's not even uncommon that I find myself looking forward to work. Perhaps, it's not about going through jobs to find the 'right one,' but rather knowing when you have found something you love to do and sticking with it and enjoying it while you can. My life now is uncomparably more exciting than any thoughts I once had of 'really focusing' on music with a band or going back to L.A. (Most notions I once had that 'Japan is good, but I'll always have to go back to L.A." are gone from my head by now.). And now I find myself questioning the importance impressed upon me of going to school as soon as possible and 'getting that education out of the way while you're young.' Aren't there so many other paths? And after all, where are we headed if we don't follow the feeling we have inside of what will really make us happy? (Problem is I thought I was following that feeling when I decided to end this job after one year.)

Possibly the scariest thing, though, is the thought of going back to 'my room' back at 'home' where I will have to constantly exert all my energy like I've never done before to avoid being sucked completely back into the numbing, floating space of everyday life there. I feel like I've made so much progress in myself over the past year, living on my own, away from all that is familiar and stagnating. The thought of leaving all this, and the environment in which I was able to achieve it, to return to the way things were before is nearly unbearable.

Over some time I've come to have my own rhythm of life, my own routine, my own schedule here. Last week my parents came to visit me, and since then my way of life has all but instantly come crashing down like a train about to reach top speed when suddenly snags tied around its wheels and axles snap tight and pull the whole thing under. It goes without saying I love my family, but I think at least some of the people reading this understand what I'm saying when I talk about overprotective parents, especially in Latino, and probably other non-mainstream U.S. culture, families. With the best intentions, they can pull a child so high out of the sky and nail them back down to the ground where dwell neuroticness and the killers of any initiative.

It was only today that I realized if I leave Japan, I'm not just going to be going back home. I'm going to be leaving a life I love, and for which I can see such a future of personal growth, and going back to the limbo which I just described. The thought of braking completely, going from speeds approaching flight to suddenly moving at a snail's pace with almost no vision, is scary. Today I thought, 'Maybe I'm not ready, or strong enough, to go back home and change it yet.'
This would have been really nice to realize half a year ago.
What the hell man.