works of wanderlust

the japan files

It’s December and for me that means it is “blog every day month” an effort for which I have long since concocted a list of blog-able reflective topics called my December-ish posts each of which should do little more than offer a leaping off point for some rambling writing to fill up my daily blogging quota.

Today that topic is…

What excited you most in 2025?

It turns out there are two subtly different terms for non-Asian people who find themselves with an interest in Japan: one can be a japanophile …or one can be a weeaboo (or weeb).

Both are similar terms, but like anything we do in this crazy culture of ours one is a reference to a tastefully pursued hobby and the other is a a pejorative insult meant to look down one’s nose at someone who is oddly obsessed with a narrow aspect of the same thing. One term leans positive while the other is a gut punch.

Like, think about it this way: if you were really into wine I could compliment you and call you an aspiring sommelier or an enthusiast, collector or someone with a refined palate. Alternatively, if you were really into wine, wink wink, we could call you a lush or an drunk.

It read it with that vibe.

Essentially people who get nerdy about Japan and try to learn about the culture, the language, the food and more lean towards the label of Japanophile. But the latter term, weeaboo, gets slapped on folks who maybe turned their karate class and Crunchyroll subscription into weird personality quirk. Get it?

I have met many of both this year. I jumped head first into the Japanese language going so far as to take a class offered by the local Japan Society, and I had a great time honing some of the lessons I had picked up on my own through tools like books and duolingo, all of that in the months before actually hopping on an airplane and jetting off to Tokyo and beyond.

I don’t want to imply that my Japanophilia has popped out of nowhere in 2025, tho. I have been flirting with the film and food and literature of Japan for decades. I think my first “this is different and I love it” moment was in a theatre in the early 2000s watching “Spirited Away” on the big screen. I have long since added Murikami’s translated works to my top five authors list. And you’ll almost always find a small stack of Usagi Yojimbo comics on my nightstand (which I fully understand is an American comic written by a man with Japanese heritage about Japanese history, but… it fits the theme here, no?) I’ve been tangentially interested for years and years.

But then in early 2025 we booked a trip and I thought to myself that it presented an interesting opportunity to go a little deeper: and so I did. I started learning hiragana and katakana characters on my phone. I picked away at some of the language. I bought books. I watched videos about the place. I dug deep into making lists of interesting Japanese foods. I prepared for our trip to make it more than a tourist jaunt, but to open my mind to observe the culture and the world when we arrived and immersed ourselves in Japan.

And as I write this we’ve been home for about a week, and I keep practicing my Japanese and I keep poking at my literature and I still have a lot of Japan videos recommended to me on YouTube (though now I can watch them with a kind of “we saw that” familiarity or comparison mindset.)

I pushed into a Japanophile vibe in 2025. And I’m glad I went so deep before we went so far.

December 7, 2025
an infinite well of curiosity

It’s December and for me that means it is “blog every day month” an effort for which I have long since concocted a list of blog-able reflective topics called my December-ish posts each of which should do little more than offer a leaping off point for some rambling writing to fill up my daily blogging quota.

Today that topic is…

What do you want to learn in 2026?

I mean, heck, if I put one more thing on my list of side gigs and hobbies I’m going to burst.

Art, music, languages, code, swimming, running, cooking, creative writing, and… deep breath… jeeze, I can’t even remember all the little hobby projects and learning adventures I’ve kicked off in the last couple years. Hell, some of the things on that list are just categories for lists of their own.

It’s almost as if I need to play a little catch up before I dive into anything new.

I mean, that’s never stopped me before, but what I guess I’m saying is that sitting here writing against a blog prompt on a wintery Saturday morning I should probably pause to reflect on the state of my life and available free time before I commit to say, learning to bake French pastries or, um, tackling the mystic art of underwater basket weaving.

It’s almost as tho I need to learn so skill to focus and organize my learning itself. A kind of meta-learning. You know, answering the age old question of how do I focus and attune my limited attention and energy into productively advancing the skills I have already committed to learning… but, y’know, without adding a whole new field of study and distraction.

Lifelong learning is one of the pillars of my very existence. But I get it. Not everyone looks at a piece of art or tastes an interesting foodstuff or hears an instrument and then reacts with the “hmmm… I wonder if I could learn how to do that” voice in their head. I do, for better or worse. I get this compulsion that gnaws away at me until I read more about it and dig deeper into it and next thing I know I’m finding out that, you know what, learning Japanese can’t be THAT hard or I can get a student violin for ONLY a few hundred dollars. True stories.

But sitting here this morning I have a nudging notion that during my last year of my forties perhaps I should queue myself up for more success in my fifties and learn some kind of temperance of self-education—that I should study how to study but studying the things I already study with more focus and structure. It sound so easy when I put it that way, but truly, such a thing could be one of the more difficult subjects I’ve ever had to study. Damn this infinite well of curiosity.

Deep breath. Again.

December 6, 2025
fear of stupid

It’s December and for me that means it is “blog every day month” an effort for which I have long since concocted a list of blog-able reflective topics called my December-ish posts each of which should do little more than offer a leaping off point for some rambling writing to fill up my daily blogging quota.

Today that topic is…

What do you wish you’d done less of this past year?

I have a terrible case of something I’m going to call FOGWI… or fear of giving the wrong impression. It is awkward to admit it, but I really find that I (often subconsciously) make stupid choices about even the most mundane choices because I over-think the impression it could have (but almost definitely does not have) on others. I do this in particular in reference to what I consider to be my professional persona.

I know, I know… we probably all do this to an extent but let me use an example to make it more clear.

Imagine you are waiting for a phone call about a job interview. You applied for something you think you’d like to get, you know the deadlines of the application and the approximate timelines for their HR department to get back to you. So for a span of about a week you live in this cloud of knowing that (a) the phone might ring at any moment during work hours about said job and (b) you want to answer it when it rings and make a good impression… or at least not the wrong impression.

YOU might turn the ringer on your phone and (rationally so) go about your life.

I probably would turn the ringer on and (irrationally so) overthink everything I do for the next week. Should I go out for a walk because I don’t want to ever be out of good cell service range? I definitely shouldn’t run or go to the pool. Should I drive to the store because I would feel weird having that conversation on the speakerphone in my vehicle. Or in the grocery store aisle. Or sitting in the mall food court! Hell, should I even leave the house, get distracted by a video game, have a shower, or mow the lawn because what if I get THAT call just then and in doing so I give the wrong impression, buff the opportunity and ruin my life forever, GAH!

I know, I know… it’s one hundred percent irrational. But in moments of vulnerability any of us is at risk of making stupid choices to reduce the perceptual imbalance of the circumstances. And rationally, I know it is all silly. I should just get on with my life, do what I need to do, and deal with the hypothetical phone call in a more existential, take it as it comes sort of way.

And to make all this worse, the multiple times I have got calls from various HR departments or potential contracting customers can you guess what they did? Yeah, they emailed me or texted me a “can we chat at such and such a time” message and we set up an appointment.

I did too much of that irrational overthinking and FOGWI this past year. And honestly, when I caught myself doing it I worked to correct it. But I definitely wish I did it less. Maybe I would have gone for more walks, logged more klicks on the running trails, or focussed my energies on other more productive and creative tasks. Or maybe I would have just played more video games. Either way, any of that beats pacing around the kitchen thinking the phone might ring, huh?

December 5, 2025
little or lotta lazy

It’s December and for me that means it is “blog every day month” an effort for which I have long since concocted a list of blog-able reflective topics called my December-ish posts each of which should do little more than offer a leaping off point for some rambling writing to fill up my daily blogging quota.

Today that topic is…

What do you wish you’d done more of this past year?

A few months after my daughter was born and as the days counted down to the stereotypical New Years Eve regrets and resolution-making, my mind shifted towards fitness. Something compelled me to log onto the website for a local running store and sign up for a running clinic. So it was that starting the second day of January a week or two later in the year 2008 I arrived in the door of the local run club and started their “learn to run 5k” training clinic.

I have only taken short bits of time off running for injury (or maybe vacations and holidays) since.

That will be exactly eighteen years ago in just less than one month. *sigh* My running career will soon be old enough to vote.

But 2025 has been a bit of a slide, if I’m being honest.

Sure, I ran a streak in September and a race in October. Sure, I did a Park Run in Tokyo in November. And sure, I have not so much missed a stretch of time in my training… so much as I have just been maintaining. But, it was not what I would call a peak running season.

My doctor has told me on a couple of occasions that not only is running probably keeping me relatively fit and young(ish) but it is something of a alternative sort of diagnostic tool: if you ever find that you can’t run because of your heart or lungs, come see me, he said. Otherwise, you’re probably gonna live for a while.

It wasn’t my heart or lungs, tho, really. Turns out it was my stomach and some secondary symptoms related to reflux and digestive health that has left me hesitant about longer distances for the last while. That, and I have been a bit lazy about it, too.

Admittedly, it was probably a lot of lazy.

And yet now that the year is coming to yet another close and I get to look back on my stats for 2025, I realize that it was a relatively grim year for my milage. I kind of wish I had pushed myself a bit further this year, to be honest.

Yeah, yeah… health first, and there were genuine health quirks that slowed me down and shut off my desire to push out into the depths of the river valley wilderness this past year. Turns out that having a coughing fit what seemed like every ten minutes for six months throws you off your game. You are cautious. You are hesitant. You second guess your own ability.

Had I cracked that nut earlier, I may have jumped back into half marathon training or something. And now… well, the snow is flying out the window even as I write this, and the temperatures are grossly unfit for anything I feel like partaking in today.

Lazy? Or self preservation? You can make up your own mind. But I do feel a little sad I didn’t cover more trail in my footprints this past year.

December 4, 2025
lucid professionalism

It’s December and for me that means it is “blog every day month” an effort for which I have long since concocted a list of blog-able reflective topics called my December-ish posts each of which should do little more than offer a leaping off point for some rambling writing to fill up my daily blogging quota.

Today that topic is…

What made your job
interesting in 2025?

Some people may incorrectly tell you that technically I don’t have a job.

They are wrong.

I am not traditionally employed these days, true, but I do in a very real sense work for myself… which is a huge job and a lot of work.

Living the dream… or maybe the nightmare. It really does depend on the perspective and the day of the week… and how much sleep I got last night.

This state of existence is very much a privileged position emerging from a stable household income, a lack of consumer or property debt, and probably most importantly (I’m not even kidding) living a frugal lifestyle… at least relatively speaking. If anyone seriously asks looking for a serious answer I usually just tell them that we simply don’t buy anything we don’t actually need. We’re shitty consumers. We eat groceries not commercially prepared food. We travel for adventure and experience, not for luxury or clout. We shop to replace, repair and maintain, not to own more stuff.

But I digress.

This state of privilege has allowed me to spin up a sole-employee, self-owned small corporation and do bit contract work as a means to keep my skills sharp and my days structured, while still leaving a tremendous amount of free time to do everything from write fiction, dabble in side projects, make art, and hang out with the dog.

In the two and a half years since jumping ship on my last full-time gig, I have written extensively (mostly in private journals that will never be published) about the transition from salaryman middle-manager in a municipal government job to bumbling self-employed creative eking out a pittance of a living doing gigs. And as it turns out both roles are stressful, but in unique and different ways. The government work was the stress of deep accountability at multiple levels, accountability to a demanding public, to a corporate hierarchy, to direct reports, to technical fidelity, to process and security, to vendor contract fairness and a long list of other deep and abiding struggles that kept me awake into the wee hours of the night. The contractor work is the stress of building reputation, honest effort, uncertainty of next week, and the dark spectre of knowing that I am every role in my own company and no one is there to prop up any shortcomings if I forget to do something important.

And yet in my lucid and rational moments, as much as I occasionally get that grass-is-greener mentality looking across the gap from present to past self, I am definitely happier and healthier where I am now.

The daily variety of living this type of professional existence is both humbling and exciting.

Yesterday I was reflecting on this same notion from the perspective of perspective itself: what part of this transition am I leaving behind, and in effect giving myself permission to pull down the metaphorical scaffolding of this professional notion I hold of myself as fixedly capable, instead looking to the broader variety of both gig and term jobs I could take on. Why? Because a year ago I was in a very different place as a guy (temporarily) working part-time day-by-day for a small company job that I had stepped into to fill the void of structure and a paycheque. And it turns out those are the two exactly wrong pieces that drive what makes this stage of my professional life interesting. Sure, I need to get paid… who the hell doesn’t? And sure, having something to do when I wake up each morning is important. But both of those things are somehow right now, in this privileged moment secondary to the adventure of dabbling and learning and contributing to interesting work efforts that I would never have encountered as a middle manager in government.

It is a bit of a dream, after all. A bit surreal. A bit hard to explain clearly to anyone not experiencing it. And something that I know I will need to awake from …and then return to reality. But it sure as hell has been interesting, if nothing else.

December 3, 2025

blog.8r4d.com

I’ve been writing meandering drivel for decades, but here you’ll find all my posts on writing, technology, art, food, adventure, running, parenting, and overthinking just about anything and everything since early 2021.

In fact, I write regularly from here in the Canadian Prairies about just about anything that interest me. Enjoy!

Blogging 426,972 words in 564 posts.

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