God, Please Give Me Shiny New Ideas
A picture I took at the Abashiri Prison museum in Hokkaido in January of 2026. This is a life-sized display model of one of the monks who would come and give sermons to the prisoners.
What would you do if you were given an entire month with no obligations, and you knew you'd never get time like that again?
My singular dream in life has been "Japan," as one word. If I have a "thing" in life, this is it. My more specifically named dreams have been: learn Japanese, become a professional literary translator, get a job in Japan. I did learn Japanese: I passed the highest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test last year. I did not become a translator: by the time I graduated college, translation as a viable career had been hacked to death with an axe by machine translation. I did get an IT job in Japan earlier this year. I'm now qualified to make a YouTube channel that earns thousands of views by pretending to work too much overtime.
My first full time job (in any country) starts in August. I got the job offer in March. Due to culturally-informed batch hiring practices, August was the earliest they could get me in. I had my last day of language school just a couple of days ago, commemorated by the signing of a paper in the break room, where I was dismissed with a, "Welp, that's it, you can go now." I have a month and a half where I have no real obligations.
I am in the last summer vacation of my lifespan.
What advice would my dead father have given me? (Certainly nothing good.) Something placid and meaningless like, "Go do something wild, your twenties are going to be the best years of your life?" What "wild" thing would he have wanted from me? To drink copiously and go to clubs? Been there, done that. To travel to another country? I'm in another country. To fall asleep to The History Channel with a bloody mary in hand? Now that I bet he'd approve of.
What is this compulsion I feel to do something "wild" while I still have time? What even is a truly "wild" thing to do? Start a band? A baseball team? Go to a rave? A silent meditation retreat? Blow up an oil pipeline? There's simply nothing I want to do right now. There is no, "Once I'm through with the grind, then I'll finally get to do something I love." I've been doing nothing but things that I love, all day, every day, and now it all feels... normal. Like it's just my life now.
A big part of the lifelong Japan dream has been that it's far away. It's physically about as far as you can get from America, and it looks completely different, too. The language is completely different. Different history, different customs. Studying Japan and its language felt like preparing for a magical quest to a faraway realm that I had studied for decades in preparation. But now the quest is complete, and the faraway realm is just my house, and my street, and I use my fluency in this magical language to discuss my pension payments at the ward office, and hire movers, and find an exercise group to join, and glance over leaflets to toss in the trash, and maybe consider buying a bike.
Studying Japanese made my life in America fun. But what's supposed to make my life in Japan fun?
I have absolutely no fucking idea at all!
Can somebody tell me when I'm supposed to start having ideas again? Or inspiration, or a yearning to do something? Nietzsche said that all great ideas are conceived while walking. You'd think from all the hours I spend roaming around town, walking up and down the river, sometimes mildly altering my path, I'd have a good fucking idea by now, wouldn't you?
I want to love something again. I want to build something. I want to want to build something. And good lord, I have six weeks on my hand. God, please make me want to found a startup. Or start a life-changing new club. Or dive deep into a new technology. Or hell, start learning Korean. Or French. Any of them. Please, just give me something that makes me feel the way Japanese used to make me feel. Something that gives my life purpose, something I lose track of time doing.
The next six weeks are going to be filled with a lot of walking.