Another of my favourites from Tokyo – the little pink-hat girl rides high above the crowds (Shibuya’s Hachiko crossing).
Posts / pages, pages / posts… Ah, the complexities of the English language. Apologies to those of you who received an ‘About the Tame’ post via my feed, my mistake when attempting to transfer some of the static content on TameGoesWild to this WP database.
The last few days have been pretty tricky, with the work-project-home balance being tipped right up causing the kind of grief that can be crippling to general wellbeingness. Still, got things more-or-less back on track now.
It’s reminded me though of one thing I’ve come to accept as OK this past year – the stops and starts that naturally accompany efforts to create new habitual actions (something that’s pretty relevant 6 weeks into a new year). Such actions might be exercise, eating healthily, writing, learning a language or good posture. In the past, I might maintain a new good habit for a week or two, then one morning find myself ‘too busy’ or ‘too stressed’ to make time for it that day.
I’d then use that slip-up as an excuse to not to do it the next day either, and then stop altogether. “Oh, well, I failed at that. I’ll do it again one day”, perceiving the effort to restart the habit so enormous that it would require weeks of mental preparation.
Which of course it doesn’t. It just requires an instantaneous decision followed by action.
Knowing this has saved me a fair bit of grief. It means I’ve been able to give up being down on myself for ‘failing’, and allowed me to restart whatever positive habitual habit is without this sense that it’s a huge struggle in which I will have ‘succeed’ or ‘fail’.
We visited my in-laws last night. With a trip to go and see granny in Western Tokyo on the cards for today, the whole family had gathered. It was a really fun evening! Great food, a lot of laughter, oh, and they also happen to speak Japanese, thus resulting in me revelling in the language bath.
I actually have very few chances to use my Japanese, thus, when the opportunity arises there’s no shutting me up. I’m actually planning to start doing some kind of voluntary work that will enable me to use my Japanese – I’m thinking one evening a week, local neighbourhood organisation, befriending oldies etc. Either that, or find some hypnosis technique to help *Twinkle* forget her English when at home.
Anyway, best get on.
ttfn