Things have been....difficult, the past few years. In 2020, right before the world wide lock downs, I moved across the world. My flight was literally one of the last ones allowed into Japan. I had to transition to a new job while in quarantine, then a second transition to face to face work.
As I have briefly mentioned ages ago on this blog, before I moved, I lived at home and I was my mother's primary caretaker. Among other things, she had some kind of early onset dementia, cyclic vomiting syndrome, and kidney disease. After I left, my brother and dad took over her care. In early 2022, she passed.
If I'm being quite blunt, she passed because at this point of the pandemic, people were beginning to refuse to wear masks, to stay socially distanced, and to take other preventative measures such as air ventilation and filtration. There have been, and continue to be, reams of research on the topic of covid, and it has been handily ignored in the US by both individuals and institutions alike. The local hospital discharged her because she could "eat a cracker and not vomit it up", because they "needed the hospital beds for people who had covid", and because "she would last until her next appointment with her kidney doctor". My mom died of kidney failure and the resulting high blood toxicity, which was entirely preventable if only someone had bothered to adjust her medications and get her on dialysis.
Yes, I am very bitter and angry and frustrated, especially with people who have the nerve to ask me why I still mask in public as if covid has magically gone away and is not the cause behind a mass disabling event across the globe.
At the same time, I found that my job was...not what I had hoped for. It was only upon my departure that I found out it was breaking a number of labor laws in Japan and was highly exploitative of its employees, to the point that there is currently an ongoing court case and public scandal. No, I will not be going into detail here. It led to a great deal of disillusionment and burn out on my part. I returned to the US in April after four years abroad, and quite frankly I am unsure if I will ever return to Japan except for vacations. The only silver lining is upon explaining my situation in detail to trusted Japanese friends, they assured me that my situation was very unusual even for the country that literally has a word for "death from overwork". I am currently a substitute teacher while I debate next steps for my life.
Unfortunately, this all meant that pretty much every aspect of my life has suffered in the past four years. I have not pursued most of my hobbies, while I was in Japan I only regularly talked to one of my friends, and my health (both physical and mental) declined. I am in the midst of trying to recover, and its only been within the last month that I've had the genuine desire to return to long form fic writing, as opposed to rp scribblings and spitballing I've been doing with friends in private.
....wow, this is all super depressing, haha. It's only when I look back that I realize how awful the last four years have been for me. There were bright spots, I promise, and I am looking forward to the next part of my life, whatever it might be. I've also spent this last summer making up for lost time in enjoying myself, and there's been a lot of joy in making plans for myself. But overall, this is the broad strokes of how I have been doing.
snowghoul
vaporwave
romaincrisis
baratheonpilled
jacobvanloon
