Category: Life Decisions

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Japan Life Decisions transportation

Fire incident on the JR.

It was one of those days where I pretty much felt that Fate/Destiny was telling me to not go through with my plans for the day. Originally, today I was supposed to go to an interview session for an English-teaching company. The emails bounced twice when I tried to reply to the company confirming my attendance, but I decided I would still go to the session to notify them of this situation. I hoped that they would still let me attend the session since the bounced emails is a problem with their system, not mine.

Ah, but then an acquaintance notified me of the chaos ensuing within the train lines; apparently, there was a fire along one of the train lines (perhaps, Chuo), and many of the lines were either stopped or severely delayed. I became a little worried since I had to take the Chuo and Yamanote lines to get to where I needed to go (Osaki). I thought maybe the train situation would be fixed by the time I reached the ticket gates, though…..

Arriving at the Tachikawa station, I approach the ticket gates and notice the swarm of people going in and out of the Nambu line entrance. It looked massively insane and headache-inducing. Since the Chuo was the main line towards Tokyo from Tachikawa, everyone had to resort to taking the Nambu line and finding alternate routes to get to central Tokyo. I sat outside of the ticket gates, watching the madness for a few minutes, until I finally decided, “I can’t go to the session. I’d probably show up late if I went through Nambu; plus, there’s no confirmation that I ever made it onto the list–why bother with all the trouble to arrive at the office when there’s no real confirmation?”

I took a risk and decided I would not deal with the matter. The Chuo line was supposed to start back up at noon, which was when the interview session would begin anyway. I decided I would save myself some money (1200 yen for a round trip to Osaki from Tachikawa! Whoa.) and trouble.

It was probably the best decision I made for the day. After all, I then had the day to relax and reflect on the busy week I have had.

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Life Decisions

Paths in life, part II.

For the past month or so, I realize that a lot of what I thought I was “set” on for my life has crumbled. The plans I have made have warped so much that it’s hard for me to figure out what I want from my life now. Did I really think I would come to this point this time last year? It has almost been a year since my graduation from college (undergraduate). What do I want to do with my degree? The obvious answer would be to find work that is related to my degree, but I find that perhaps my passion does not truly lie in that field. Do I really enjoy advertising? I enjoy looking at it and studying it, yes. But I wonder, do I have all the skills required for it? Do I have that creative mind for it?

I talked with a family friend last month about advertising since he is a top executive at an NY advertising firm. He asked me what my interests/hobbies are, and I responded with “Reading, writing” and some other things. He said I should really play up my creative writing if I want to get into copywriting. I grow excited thinking about playing around with mock-ups and creating my own ads. But then I begin to think: Are my ads not creative enough? Not “outside of the box” enough?

I know that having failure scare me enough to stop me from taking action does no good at all. As Donny Deutsch had said in his book, I should not just sit around and “wish and wait,” but I should just “Do!”…because, as long as I know I took action, even if I do fail in the end, at least I will know that I still managed to make some form of progress instead of sitting and waiting around and feeling too scared of failure.

It’s hard to say what I will be doing in a few months, where I’ll be.

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Life Decisions Thought of the Moment

Going for one’s dreams vs. doing what’s right

I have trouble trying to figure out this dilemma for myself. How do I go for my own dreams with no regrets? Yet I feel like my dreams may not be the “right” way to go about things. And then I fear disapproval from my loved ones. How does someone come across as being ambitious yet not selfish?