I (don’t) hate my job

I had this sudden and violent realization yesterday that I hated my job. My previous job felt like a community and made me feel like I was inside society. My current job at a foreign company, speaking mainly English and having no close comradery with colleagues makes me feel more alienated and makes my perceptions of Japanese society come less from intimate experience and more from brief encounters with strangers that are easy to misinterpret negatively.

I thought about friends outside work and with a young son I rarely meet them anyways, and now they are all non-Japanese anyway. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t build a link to society to combat a feeling of alienation.

My wife’s family has a strong Chinese connection with her mom from Taiwan and sister’s husband from Shanghai, and so something more unique than anything. 

So I simmered in these thoughts, not wanting to be unnecessarily negative, but also not wanting to run away from them just because they were negative. The overarching thought was my last job provided a connection into something bigger and my current job does not.

After having this idea in the slow cooker of the mind all day, and going about interactions at my health check yesterday and with colleagues in the office, I came to a different conclusion, and something that I had come to before. 

Passive participation is over. 

There are things I can do at my office to end this feeling. I can speak more Japanese, and not mind how amazing everyone’s English is. I can confront my Japanese probably having gotten worse and allow it to get better again. I can ensure my family does more inside society. I can have fun with friends and family and it doesn’t take away from anything, and only builds things. I shouldn’t blame them for something not related to them. 

I can take action basically. 

And so we’ll put that in the slow cooker today.