Too much Factorio

This weekend started out well enough. I got up on Saturday and went to tennis. Then it went bad, because there was no tennis, so I just did a ten-minute loop around the park. I read for a bit and then went to the supermarket. I had planned to go climbing, but I wanted to invite Corali and maybe Wyatt, and since I met Corali leaving on my way back from the supermarket, I decided to put off the trip until Sunday. Thus, I spent the rest of the day on Factorio, and had difficulty sleeping.

My plan was to go to church on Sunday. I didn’t go, and felt terrible because of it, so I wallowed in Factorio, and expected to do so for the whole day. Then I got frustrated with trying to make sulfuric waste water without ore processing (it’s basically impossible without tons of land or blue science), and decided that I was going to go climbing after all. I had a really good session despite tearing up two of my fingers. In particular, I decided on a goal of figuring out how to do the first long course as smoothly and effortlessly as possible. It’s almost like choreography. I also tried the second long course. I didn’t get very far, but I felt productive even so.

I woke up at 5:30 despite going to sleep around 1. I tried to go back to sleep, but gave up and studied a bit of kanji. Then I played Factorio until 7. I semi-automated blue science, but I have an aluminium bottleneck that was extreme even after I tripled my processing power. I think I’ll add another flotation unit or two, then maybe I’ll start making non-silicon glass next.

It was 18 degrees when I woke up, so I decided to come to school by bicycle for the first time since June. I was a little late so I pedaled harder than I probably should have and thus was a bit sweaty when I arrived, but I think if I hadn’t done that it would have been a very pleasant and refreshing ride. Today I hope to finally make a reservation for the farmstay for next month. I also would like to pick up my debit card which is at the post office, but I can’t quite figure out how to do so.

Honestly, I don’t think I’ll be doing either of these. I will probably go straight home, play Factorio, and maybe read a little. I read four chapters of a novel here at school, but it's a little slow so far and I'm tired of working hard to concentrate.

First day of the second term

Today was the first day of school in the second term, after summer vacation. We had a second term opening ceremony which was mercifully short. In general I think that the number of ceremonies and the procedures taken tend to be excessive if not altogether unnecessary, but today’s ceremony made me think. About a quarter of it was dedicated to students reading an essay they wrote, probably at the end of last term. The subject was what they planned to do better this term. They all said that they would study harder for tests, for example.

This made me think about the power of saying (maybe communicating?) what you are or what you intend. Because the students announced their intentions, maybe their friends will hold them accountable, or maybe their own conscience will remind them. I remember that I told some people that I was going to bike to Matsumoto one night, and even though I didn’t want to do it, I did it because I had said that I would. Also, when I write on a social media profile that I like something, I feel some kind of compulsion to do that activity regardless of whether I feel like doing it or not. I think this was stronger when I used social media (facebook) more often, because lately the compulsion feels very weak.

In other news, I’ve barely drunk coffee for the past month. However, apparently I’m back to waking up at 5, and now I’m feeling a bit dazed. Yesterday during the staff meeting I nearly fell asleep. So I’m thinking that I need to try drinking it again. I read that it’s bad to drink coffee early in the morning, but maybe if I make it when I get to school and then drink it during first or second period (or between, if I have to), maybe I will avoid the ill effects.

Yesterday I went to the climbing gym. I tried hard, and managed to climb a few red problems, but I climbed so awkwardly that it was quite tiring and a bit discouraging. But really I haven’t gone consistently since April, maybe only four or five times, so I’m still trying to get back into it.

Drawbacks

I spent an excessive amount of time on Factorio this morning, but I don’t think it affected me too much, as I subsequently cooked lunch and spent a solid hour reading a Japanese web novel. I’m very pleased with how engrossed I can get in web novels. They’re somehow easier than visual novels—maybe because I tend to choose somewhat difficult visual novels. Maybe if I played the typical “choose a girlfriend” type of visual novel I wouldn’t have as much difficulty.

Yesterday and today I was thinking about a few serious drawbacks of pursuing the master’s degree. I already have a Japanese visa, cell phone, bank account, documents, etc., and it’s a pain to get those. Also, just by having those I have an advantage over the majority of applicants for the job (probably). If I go home I will have some expenses in addition to the airfare, the biggest of which will probably be transportation. I guess if I work close enough, like at Food Lion, I could just bike to work, but there are days where that won’t be practical. I could get a motorbike or motorcycle, but though it might be a bit cheaper I’m not sure it would be significantly better, and I would still have the problem of getting rid of it before leaving.

Finally, I realized that doing a master’s program in one and a half years is not an easy route. I was thinking that I could work full-time or semi-full time, at least until my student teaching begins, but after revisiting that assumption it seems quite incorrect. (Maybe even planning to do it along with my ALT work is a bit optimistic, but I think I could probably pass it off for work, and maybe even get some assignments done at the junior high school.) I was hoping for an interesting experience of a full-time job and I was looking forward to the money that comes with it, but actually I think a part-time job, about 20 hours a week, will be the most that I can handle. Maybe if I look for interesting part-time jobs, I might get more excited about it, but thinking about going back to Food Lion does not elicit enthusiasm.

Even so, I still feel like I’m leaning more towards going home. I think it’s almost inevitable that I will want to teach again sometime in the future, and getting the certificate and degree out of the way now will give me a bit of a break and give me some flexibility, so if I decided to try to work outside the field of education but regretted it, I could get back to a teaching job. But right now I’m in the best position I’ll probably ever be for trying a programming job in a foreign country, so I should give it a shot.

The middle path, getting a teacher’s certificate, would allow me to stay in this advantageous position of getting a programming job in Japan while also expanding my education field potential. It’s really the best option, though it’s also perhaps the most unlikely and difficult, and for that reason I think it doesn’t seem as appealing to me. Starting a programming job while also taking education classes would also be a kind of middle route, but I would imagine that I would have to make a decision within two months. That should be enough. But on the other hand, that would also mean losing all the setup. I guess that’s mainly housing. If I stuck around long enough to make up for that while still passing the education courses, I will feel much wiser and focused and won’t have lost anything.

Future plans thought dump

Today I considered my future options and realized that I was seriously entertaining the possibility of only being in Japan for seven and a half more months. Japan is great, but my present job prospects are not. I've done my time here, and hopefully I'll get a language certificate out of it in addition to useful teaching experience. Furthermore, if I want to come back, I feel like I have a good foot in the door in the form of a recommendation and experience. I am kind of preempting my earlier plans of looking for another kind of job, but this way my path will be set by early January, so I'd have to have a solid alternative prospect before New Years, which seems unlikely. So for now I'm going to provisionally plan to leave.

I need to decide what I want to do before leaving. I will have one more long holiday (New Years), and then the time between finishing work and returning to America. Ideally I think I would use the time in March to go to interviews and travel based on that, but I could put it off if something comes up. As for sight-seeing, I'd like to go to Nagoya, Kyoto, and Kanazawa. Kyoto is mainly to check off my list. Kanazawa might be a convenient stop on the way to or from Kyoto. To be honest though, I might skip one or both if I don't find a good incentive to go. Nagoya could probably be a long weekend trip--there's not a whole lot that I want to see. As for experiences, I would still like to do a farmstay. That might be difficult if I don't do it soon. Finally, I would like to give bikepacking one more good shot before I hang up my helmet. So I think that's my list:

- farmstay (Sept 14th or 21st)
- bikepacking - (October 12th)
- Nagoya (November 2nd)
- Kanazawa (New Years?)
- Kyoto (New Years?)

As far as moving back is concerned, my biggest investments have been my bike, violin, climbing gear, and bikepacking gear. The violin and climbing gear I will probably ship home. The bike I'll sell--I'll get an evaluation from Hard Off and then try to sell it and the panniers for a bit more, and if I fail I'll take it back to Hard Off. I might try to sell my hammock stuff, or I might just take it home. I'm pretty sure that some employee will be interested in my rice cooker, and if not I can probably get a bit for it from the second hand shop. Hopefully I'll get enough money out of all that to pay for my vacation to Kyoto or Kanazawa, hah. Checking the flights to the US, there doesn't seem to be any variation in the dates, probably because it's so far out. Right now the price is about $820 regardless of where I fly from or to. I probably won't buy my flight until New Years, which will be about three months before I leave--that should be enough time.

Back to the jobs. I had planned to apply to four kinds of jobs--international/private schools, programming, translation, and anything else that looked interesting. By going home I'm heading down the education path and improving my prospects with the education route, so there's no point in seriously interviewing for that kind of job. Most translation jobs require the JLPT N1, and I won't find out what my score is until mid-February, which will be too late for me to change my plans. I'm not very optimistic about programming, and I don't want to work in Tokyo or Osaka so I don't think I have much of a shot there. Finally, while there are no doubt other jobs that might interest me, the only way I can imagine finding them would be by going to a career fair type thing. It seems like a waste of time to browse through hundreds or thousands of job listings to see if one piques my interest just from a website's description. Looking further at career fairs, there's only one that I could attend before March - MyNavi Global Career Expo, in Tokyo, the Saturday before Christmas. There isn't much information about it, so I'll have to check back. I should probably do one more search for career fairs in October or November.

My reduced interest in jobs does not mean that I won't interview. In fact, I think it will be a perfect time to interview, because there won't be any pressure, and as long as I conduct myself well, it might lead to an open door in the future. I say this particularly with regards to translation jobs and programming. I'm not sure I could honestly interview for a teaching position. I'll give the local schools (all four of them?) a shot since it's convenient, but I don't think I'll try to travel.

As for other goals in the meantime, my first priority is to pass the JLPT. I would also like to at least give the taiko a try. I want to continue climbing to stay in shape during the week, and I'll play tennis on Saturday morning to help me get ready for going home. I think the violin helps my mindset, but it's last priority. I want to start going to church again, and I think I can manage it if I maintain this driven mindset.

One thing I need to figure out to survive this interim time (really just the next four months, I guess) is how I can avoid being a burden at the junior high school. I'd like to get to know the other teachers, but they're so busy that I'm afraid to talk to them, and they never talk to me. I don't feel like I contribute much in the lessons, but it's hard to know what will be taught until the day before the lesson, and by then it's too difficult to discuss things.

This plan might seem strange considering my history, because if I carry out this plan, it will have been the third time of pursuing more or less the same goal. Granted, the first time I probably made a good decision to pull out since it seemed that I wouldn't be getting the job required for me to progress. The second time though, four years ago, I was working on the same kind of program that I'm considering now, and I withdrew despite being almost halfway finished. My main reason was because I felt sickened by the cultural brainwashing and the lack of focus on actual teaching skills. Further, I was intimidated by the prospect of student teaching, especially after hearing some horror stories, and I was convinced that I didn't want to teach in the US anyway. Finally, I was thoroughly enjoying my programming class, and felt like I had a superior future in that.

What is different this time? First, the cultural brainwashing should be alleviated due to my choice of attending a Christian school. Student teaching is still intimidating and I am still not thrilled to teach in the US. However, teaching in Japan will have given me two years of actual classroom observation experience, which is something I lacked before. I think it will help my confidence. Finally, while I haven't given up on programming, my past struggles with the job search and pursuing independent projects have shown me that it may not be the ideal path I thought it was. Previously, I was also concerned about a teacher's salary, compared to which a programming job seems like a dream. Now I'm more at peace with the idea of not having a family and not living as upper-middle class, especially since a desire to leave the country might be inevitable.

To me, this seems like a logical refutation of the accusation that I'm repeating my past failures. But I do think it would be profitable to remind myself of my thought processes that lead me to the decisions. Unfortunately, I wrote one blog post in 2015 which was mainly an event summary and thoughts about my cashier job, and my posts in late 2014 were quite short, so I don't think I have a way to find out what I was thinking. I'm glad that this year I have considerably improved my writing habits.

Job rationalizing

I haven’t been writing lately, probably mostly because I’ve spent my free time on Factorio. I recently reached a point where I had accomplished my most clear goals, and I realized that my scale was way too large to actually implement and expect my computer to handle. There are still things that I could do, but I think I’m more likely to start a new game at this point, despite having invested ~130 hours in this save. But I more or less achieved a feeling of the pointlessness of what I was doing, so I don’t think I’ll be returning to the game soon, at least not seriously.

Yesterday I enjoyed playing my Japanese point and click adventure game for the second time. I played for two hours, which is the longest I’ve ever played a visual novel in Japanese. I did get tired and skip some text, but I understood almost everything I tried to read. This morning I woke up and studied kanji first thing.

I’ve been talking to a girl via OKcupid who lives in Shiojiri. She doesn’t volunteer a lot of information, so I feel like we should try meeting, but I’m having trouble figuring out how to suggest it, especially considering I won’t even be in town next week and I’ll be busy the next week.

I went climbing on Sunday for the first time in nearly three months. My left fingers were torn up within 45 minutes (I had to bandage them), and my broken right ring finger would occasionally twinge with the pressure, and I’d have to give up. It was painful not being able to do things that were easy for me three months ago, and I definitely was weaker than before and had to go home after one and a half hours. Still, I’m glad that I could go back.

Jobs are on my mind. I’ve been looking at daijob.com and there are a lot of options that I feel like might be okay, especially in translation and programming. For the former, I would definitely have to pass JLPT N1 in December, which is a bit iffy. For the latter, I still think that I would need a good portfolio. But I realized that a lot of my problem with a programming job is just from fear of the unknown. Well, there was also the post-interview task from the programming job in NC that had me stumped, so I’m a little concerned because of that. And most jobs are from 9:00-18:00, plus overtime, which is a little more than I would like to work, but if I enjoy it, it won’t be a problem theoretically. I should try it—the worst case scenarios are that I lose a lot of time applying and/or interviewing, or maybe worst would be that I have to work for a year in terrible conditions, or I have to quit. If I want to be a teacher, that probably wouldn’t affect my job prospects, and certainly not in other countries.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Morocco, but to be honest I don’t see how that would end much differently from Russia. The people will probably be friendlier, and the food will be better, but I’m sure that I won’t know enough Arabic to converse. If I moved anywhere besides the USA and Japan, it would be kind of embracing the life of a vagrant. Perhaps with that mindset it would be easier. I would go to the country looking for new experiences, improvement of my Arabic, maybe learning to cook, and once I’ve spent a year or two there and accomplished my goals I would move on. This would give me a sense of progression that I like, but instead of career progression it would be more of an experience progression.

Tomorrow I leave for Hokkaido. I’m considering leaving early and visiting a train museum, but I’m not sure how much luggage I will have and I may have too many things to do in the morning.

Considering other countries

I’m feeling antsy. I guess it’s primarily because of my job and my not-so-great relationships with the other teachers at my junior high school, but also I’m feeling the pressure of getting a more permanent position. But really, would it be bad if I never got a permanent position? I know a few older adults who have continued to work at a language school or moved up to teacher trainer. Only a few of them have family though, as far as I know. It would be nice to be in a job which would have transferrable skills should I ever decide to move back to the US.

Yesterday I mentioned to Hideshima-sensei that I might go to Morocco after I finish teaching in Japan. She said that it was a shame, and that I should look for jobs in private elementary schools in Japan, especially in Tokyo. I’m not sure I could live in Tokyo, but I have invested quite a bit in Japan. The language is my biggest investment that I wouldn’t be able to recover anywhere else. There’s also my bike and my camping gear which is probably about $900 altogether. I could probably keep some of the gear and I should be able to get some money by selling my bike. Thinking back though, I probably spent close to that on my piano in Russia, and I abandoned it without even getting money, and enjoyed it for less time than I’ve had my bike. Oh, I’ve also bought that violin here. I think I would take that with me, though.

What else is keeping me here? I do like the hours in principle, but on the other hand they’re better for social activities than productivity, and right now I’m managing neither. In fact, I wonder if part of the reason I feel so unmotivated is because I don’t have time to study or do things in the morning. At Narakawa and even at Kikyo, I usually had time to study Japanese and programming. I don’t have any complaints about the company, aside from my salary. But this paragraph is moot, because I don’t plan to continue this job next year no matter what.

My options in Japan are: a programming job, a teaching job, or some other job that I probably won’t know anything about. As I’ve written before, I like the idea of the programming job, but I find it difficult to motivate myself to produce anything, and without a respectable degree or a portfolio I would be suspicious of anyone who would hire me. Plus I’m out of practice and I don’t seem to want to get back into practice.

I guess it comes down to this question—do I want to expand my job possibilities outside of Japan? If I did so, I would likely be going back to private language school hours and responsibilities. Can I do that? If so, why wouldn’t I do that in Japan? My immediate response is because of the wage ceiling—unless I become a business owner, language school teachers and ALTs only make a bit more than I make now. However, it’s quite likely that I would make less in just about anywhere else in the world that I could easily find a job.

In the past, my main complaint with language schools has been the lack of continuity and community. I really don’t see a way around this, but my thought is that if I hop from one country to another quickly enough, I’ll be so interested in the novelty that I won’t be too bothered. And maybe someday I’ll find a way or a reason to break the loop. One problem with this is that I will be isolating myself even further than I already am. I will be consigning myself to a wandering life, despite preferring the comforts of home. I’ll think about it some more.

Mood swings

I had a difficult weekend, and didn’t do much of anything. On Friday I planned to tell my pastor that I would meet with him, but I ended up delaying and then I finally sent him a message on Sunday that I wasn’t ready to do so. I played some Factorio but I spent the majority of it moping and playing Sudoku, from what I remember. Monday was equally rough despite me having a decent day at school. Tuesday I had a trying day, but I felt very positive throughout. It seems like the cause of my emotional turbulence is still mysterious. I did decide to quit coffee. It wasn’t really an intentional thing though—I suddenly found that the thought of coffee turned my stomach.