Klingsor's First Winter

Son hasn’t woken up in the night. Two nights in a row.

This is glorious.

We have been so stressed for reasons I don’t even know. I think for me it’s my wife’s stress, but I know some of her stress is from me, and of course we’re both stressed I think from that continued lack of personal time.

I’ve just been on my phone this morning, but if this keeps up, I will start running at 4am, which has been proven to be the first step to save my soul.

My son and I have had a cold. So that has stopped that and also has gotten me to go to sleep before 9pm. Honestly probably a very good thing showing me how easy it is to get up at 4am if sleeping 7 hours uninterrupted.

It sometimes feels a little embarrassing how we struggle with all this, knowing how common child raising is, and how mature we should be for doing this in our 40s. I don’t think we could imagine a second kid now, and my colleague who’s 48 just had his fourth! (His wife is younger.)

Time for another cup of tea. They’re all still sleeping upstairs.

Canadian-ness isn’t something I often feel. It’s usually more a feeling of not being American, but being North American.

I feel a sense of being from Vancouver, but Vancouver’s relationship with Canada is different than Toronto or Montreal’s perhaps. I have also never been east of the Rockies.

However, whenever I listen to Winnipeg’s (maybe some are from Toronto?) The Weakerthans. I feel this slightly painful, very deep yearning for Canada.

It’s something I cannot properly put into words, and it may not make sense because I don’t think one thinks the Weakerthans are quintessentially Canadian.

Perhaps it’s because I listened to them a lot before I left for Japan at 21, and it somewhat feels like a soundtrack for my early 20’s that never materialized.

Most of my friends I think got into either hard drugs in the city, or having families in the faraway suburbs and I am glad I never was apart of either group. Despite all that was gained by loving my early 20’s onwards in Japan in the late aughts, the curiosity for what was potentially missed pops its head up sometimes.

And that feeling is what my heart identifies as Canadian, which it is in a very subjective sense.

Anyways, I’m listening to the Weakerthans final studio album now on the Saikyo Line back to Urawa, feeling Canadian in a way that isn’t connected with beer commercials, ice hockey, or contrasting with America.

I have to sit in this nice cool air conditioned building for an hour with nothing but my thoughts and my phone.

I spent the morning with my son at the community center. I was going to buy flowers for my wife after, but the line at the flower shop was outrageous, and after a phone call we decided on extra sweets.

My son is starting to be interested in other people. All of a sudden I become super self-conscious of my Japanese, and need to overcome that. It means I need to go to the community center every Saturday and Sunday. He will not learn shyness from me.

He’s also still enjoying throwing things, and this isn’t the first impression we want to make on others. So it’s balancing playing it cool, apologizing when necessary, and a bunch of other stuff.

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We’ve had a fairly clean living room and bedroom for a while, and my office is okay I guess, but we really stalled on the rest of the house. I want to get back to this. We may want to all of a sudden sell the place and I don’t want to wait until then to clean.

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It’s really not the time to be lazy, for the next decade or two. Maybe I can successfully fake it after a decade, but I need to let go of Sundays where I did nothing but lounge and waste the day. There’s so much I want to do and it depends on not being lazy.

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I want to start looking into camping gear. When my son is 2 or 3, I want to start doing some sort of camping. My wife says she does too, but she’s not a bug person and they live where one camps. Not sure how that will work.

I want camp in style though. As a kid my family did more roughing it camping. I want big tents and areas to chill if it’s raining. No hotdogs but fancy tasty food. Not sure if this is easier to say than do.

Golden Week was ultimately good.

I was around my son a lot and he became even closer to me. My wife’s stress is getting better.

Life is sometimes very tough, but it feels right.

I just played 30 min of a video game I like. Now it’s time to join my son and sleep.

More things to talk about when motivated to talk, which is not now.

I name video game protagonists my son’s name now. The older characters in games are 27. I’m above that by a skip and a jump.

He’s the hero now. He has to inherit the world that we left him. He can hate us as he feels fit, and his rage can change the world in ways our rage never did.

Or maybe that way of thinking is over and he’ll fight to be the best capitalist there ever was.

I don’t know, I’m on the Saikyo line buzzed coming home thinking about life listening to Billy Joel.

Being at home for a week is good to get things done around the house, but by no means not stressful and a relaxing vacation.

We seem to have a structured schedule for our now one year old son.

I have hope that more time to relax will come in the future, but perhaps not properly for another few years.

If it’s a time to be busy, then it’s a time to be busy.

That being said, I’m going to the leaving party of a friend who’s leaving Japan after 18 years of living here. So perhaps I spoke too hyperbolically.

There’s a few topics I want to write about, and hopefully I find the time to do so soon.

I’m writing this as my wife is out shopping and my son has his morning nap.

I usually get up with my son around 5:30. I try to get to bed around 10pm, so that I have ample rest before doing so.

Last night however I went to sleep before 9pm, and woke up naturally at 4am. My son is still asleep and I am having beautiful quiet morning time.

This is a million times better than night time. I must continue to do this.

My son apparently stood on his own for about 8 seconds today.

There’s feels to be a million small things in my life all slowly changing for the better.

I don’t think this is the case, but that doesn’t matter in the slightest, because that’s how it feels and the feeling can make it happen.

There are so many things I’ve ignored getting on top of that now I see in front of me and ready to get done with.

It reminds me of this dreadful depression I had around 19. I was so curious at the time what rational argument (for I was a rational man) would get me out of the utter meaninglessness of it all.

And nothing did. I just felt in a better mood one day. Then I acted on that and did fun things. Then I couldn’t understand why I was so hung up on meaninglessness, when there’s meaning in so many things.

I got blue again after that, but I always then knew that it was likely just a mood and I shouldn’t engage with it, but let it do its thing.

That was an aside and a half.

Anyways, the to do list is getting longer as I’m organizing what needs to get done and is also getting shorter because we’re doing what needs to get done.

This weekend however will be all about his first birthday.

It’s cliched to say or think about, but thinking about the joy of birthdays as a kid and the fulfillment I think of trying to create that joy for my son puts me in this lovely circle of life feeling.

May all go well for a while and may the mind be a positive beast of action.

I’ve thought about this again, and I no longer see it in a negative light. We are keeping our cards close to our chest and letting people get into a false sense of security thinking they can take advantage of us, when they can’t.

We have all the information from two financial advisors as to what we should do, and now have time to compare and contrast, and ask friends. There are many options and they’re all about an amount of return, some guaranteed some not, some hinging on the yen/US dollar relationship, some not.

Now we’re listing up things we felt were a bit weird and we will politely ask them in emails so we have answers in writing that we can carefully view later.

It took three appointments with one, and four with the other to get here, but it’s a good place to be.

Late to the game perhaps with all this, but that’s fine.

I deactivated my Twitter account and my Bluesky account again.

I used the Twitter one to get angry at the world, and the Bluesky one to write thoughts about video games.

I’ve deactivated them both many times. For minutes or hours usually, but sometimes for days.

I hope that this will be the last time.

I’m currently exhausted, in bed, waiting for my son’s sleep to become a deep sleep.

We listened to our “Life Planner” tell us all about his company’s insurance schemes and how they’re the best.

I worked from home before that.

For some reason I’m now exhausted. I don’t think it was that hard of a day?

I still need have a shower and some down time, but let’s just rest my eyes for a bit.