I have no idea

(Yo La Tengo)

I have no idea where I am going.
Don't mean that to sound negative or anything.
It's probably got its good and not as good points.

But really, I just have no idea what I am going to be doing in the next few months, the next few days, or the next few hours.
Besides that I will be sleeping until 8 the next morning.
As long as I can fall asleep and not stay up trying impossibly to figure things out.

Whenever everyone from my work and town asks me what I'm going to do next, I give a whole range of responses. First I would say I was going to go back and get ready for grad school. Then, I started saying I was going to go back, start getting ready for grad school, then maybe go to Chile for half a year before going back to school. Then, I started telling my close friends, I'd realized it was too early for me to leave Japan and that I was going to try to find another English-teaching job in the same city. Then, in a neighboring city. Tonight, the head of one of the daycare centers I work at asked me what I was going to do when I got back, and I told her, "Probably get ready for grad school...maybe...Actually, I don't really know myself."

I actually don't really even know what I'm going to be doing tomorrow. All I know is I have three days to move out of this apartment before the next ALT comes, my international driver's license expires tomorrow, my friend is letting me stay at his place for four days to figure out my next move, and then I'll supposedly be out in the next-door city hopefully with a cheap place to stay looking for another year-long job in Japan/trying to figure out if I really want to stay here another year/knowing I don't want to live back at home in L.A. again yet/wondering when I'm really going to get to Latin America, especially now that my interest in living there is driven by more than just unjustified cultural embarrassment. But I need a job and a place to stay no matter what, and if in L.A. one's not available and the other isn't where I want to be yet, right here seems to be the best option.

And thus we have my inability to figure out what I'm doing tomorrow.

It was brought up to me last Friday by one of the teacher's I've become closest to that I'm the one who looked for an apartment and paid the deposit and everything for my new place after I decided to move, not the Board of Education. I'm paying the monthly rent, and the 50% subsidy I receive for it the BoE gives to all teachers in the city, not just ALTs (something the BoE doesn't take it upon itself to tell you). This means that I am the complete owner of this place in which I'm living, so why is the BoE asking me to move out of my place by the 29th so that new ALT can move in? That's just it. Because it's easier for them to just use my place for the next guy instead of having to find him a new place on their own. Just like it would have been cheaper for them to have me living in a falling-to-pieces old house. Apparently, I am still not experienced enough to recognize when people are taking advantage of me in a very polite way.

But I suppose that's what this is all about: experience.
Whatever "this" is.

Fortunately, survival mode is kicking in and I'm realizing I'm going to have to do some major packing and shipping tomorrow and the day after. And the lack of car means I'm going to have to depend on friends a bit more. But I've got to get this done no matter what. So I'm going to get it done, and fast, fast enough so that I can have a little more peace of mind to figure out the medium-to-big stuff.

On the plus side, I had a nice time at a summer festival at one of my daycare centers tonight. And I realized the amazingness of Roy Orbison's voice and song-writing this weekend. Today, I realized the insane creativity of Ritchie Valens's guitar style, the super-heavy bass strings (those've got to be tuned down extra low, how many people were even doing that back then??) and the super echoey chords. Listening to at least one of his songs, I thought, "Man, this is just straight up trippy! I can't believe people even call this normal music now!"

I'm going to do one thing right tonight, and that's go to bed early enough to allow me to get a good, positive start on the day.

Reading about my friends' lives on their blogs has also been really inspiring. I'm not sure how I feel about this whole restless 20s, though. I'd kind of like to calm down for a bit. But maybe I'll miss it later. So I'd better just live it up now, while it's around.

It's hard to move on.