Holiday cheer, how I desperately search for you ...

This past month and a half, I've felt like absolute garbage. I want to be happy, especially since it's the holiday season (my favourite time of the year, even), but I just can't seem to dig myself out of this incredible feeling of sadness I've felt after seeing my future and my dreams collapse before my eyes. I still don't see any sort of future ahead of me, and even worse, my hopes of going back to Japan for more than just a vacation have been pretty much dashed, since there isn't any way for me to continue to study the language anymore since I've exhausted all the classes that are available, and I can't practise with anyone since no one else I know speaks Japanese well enough for me to do so, leaving me struggling to keep it on life support. With that gone, I don't think there's even anything that's ahead of me that can hold a candle to what I have experienced already. I just wish I could find some sort of hope ...

This Christmas, I am asking for a good future to be ahead of me -- something I can look ahead to in life. Right now, it seems like the best is behind me, and there's nothing ahead of me to look to in the future.

Two days ...

"Barring some tragic problem, the dream will finally happen." (Written on August 24 on this blog)

I think that not being able to find a job due to numerous circumstances qualifies as a "tragic problem."

The crappy part of my life begins in 2 days, and the peak in my life has for sure passed. Nothing exciting enough to top or even match what I experienced when I was 20 can happen in the middle of nowhere in America while doing just an "I'm doing this to make ends meet" type of job until I retire or get let go.

I've gotta figure out how to change the domain name of this blog. Great Teacher Inuzuka is finished forever. It's all over. I cannot be a teacher in Japan now because now that one of the biggest chains of English schools in Japan collapsed, the market is permanently flooded with people who already have work visas, meaning that it is impossible for me to break into it. I just wish I had the skills and means to do another sort of job that could 1- lead me to Japan, and 2- make me feel like 23 years of hard work was actually worth it.

I learned an important lesson today

It all ended today. The years of effort I put into trying to achieve my dream of being a teacher in Japan have officially gone to waste. My "long shot" -- the last chance that I had to get a job here (aside from the interview that even the interviewer considers a long shot), has decided that rather than hiring me, they're going to keep their troublemaking current teacher. So, with only four days left in Japan and only a long shot standing between me and never being able to return to Japan for more than just a short trip, I think it's pretty safe to say that it's all over now. Years and years of struggle have only left me with memories, memories that will never return. My life peaked at 20; I don't see how, without returning to Japan long-term, I can possibly top what I experienced then. That means my life is already on the decline -- another 60-something years of just slow decline, without anything that can even hold a candle to what I experienced when I was 20 ahead of me.

I have learned a valuable lesson from all this struggle. In the seven months I have put forth my best effort to attain a dream, I have learned one thing. Effort gets you NOWHERE. It's not worth it to put forth your best effort because luck, not effort, determines your fate. I've been lied to my whole life; people have constantly told me that if I work hard I will achieve my dreams. That's a lie. If it was the truth, these seven months would have been worth more than some (for the most part, especially in Korea) lousy memories. The way to achieve dreams is through having good luck on your side. Unfortunately, with luck not on my side, my dreams are completely unachievable. I'd better get ready for a relatively lousy life, 'cos a dull, nothing-to-aim-for life is exactly what 23 years of doing everything the hard way has earned me.

I never thought I'd have to write a C&D letter to Lady Luck (not that I can take any action against a metaphorical character), but ...

Dear Lady Luck,

Lately, there have been a few things that you've been doing constantly that have been really getting on my nerves. Therefore, I ask that you stop or at least take it easy on the following four things:

1. Adding "there's a catch" to practically every good thing that comes my way. There are few enough good things that happen to me as it is. Do the few good things that happen to me REALLY need to be diluted with something bad ?!
2. Adding ridiculously high levels of difficulty to literally everything in my life. Things are hard enough without always putting unnecessary roadblocks in my way whenever I try to do anything, from the big things in life to even the smallest tasks.
3. Giving me horrible strokes of luck that really would pretty much never happen to anyone else but still happen to me (losing that job due to an administrative error, for example). Those need to completely vanish immediately. I'm thoroughly sick of those in particular.
4. Making me pay for other people's mistakes. I already have to pay when I make mistakes. Why is it that I always have to be the scapegoat when others make mistakes as well? I've had it with having to take the fall for everyone else all the time.

I want to actually be happy in life, but these two things constantly seem to happen, and it is making it very difficult to enjoy life and actually be happy. Please, knock it off.

Sincerely,
Shintarou Inuzuka

P.S. Give me my hopes and dreams back -- WITHOUT adding the usual ridiculously high level of difficulty -- and I mean NOW. Not after I've already settled down and it's too late. Not after years of having to go through more of these ridiculous roadblocks. Not after more circumstances in which it seems like I finally achieved my goals only to find out that a mistake someone else made ruined the whole thing. I mean RIGHT NOW. I'm serious. I want them back THIS INSTANT. No more hurdles. No more roadblocks. Just give me what I have worked already way too hard to achieve without forcing me to go through even more of this garbage. I've had enough.

GONE!

Well, it only took 5 days to lose a job, but pathetic me did. I am so fucking loser, havng lost a job n 5 days. My future is end today. It is nothing left. I am not do a thng right, and I wish I was die.

Good things are never meant to last

Well, I made it here ... but I've been here all of 4 days, and I suddenly find out that due to a mistake the administration made (they had offered the job to someone else before they offered it to me, but they forgot about it), I'm now up a creek without a paddle. I have just one month to find a new job in Japan. I so far have only one possibility lined up, and unfortunately that means if I don't get the new job fast, it's good-bye dreams and good-bye future. I do nothing else well enough to get any sort of job in America, and I don't speak Japanese well enough to get a non-teaching job in Japan, nor will I EVER speak Japanese well enough to get a non-teaching job in Japan if I don't stay! Once again, other people make huge mistakes, and guess who's the fall guy? Me, that's who.

And so, I must pay the ultimate price of my future for someone else's mistakes. This wouldn't be the first time, but this time, because someone else messed up, I have no future. I have no talents at all that can get me a job where I can feel like I'm actually doing something with my life, and my dreams of staying in Japan, becoming fluent in Japanese and basically living out my life here are completely gone, as without a job, they're impossible to achieve. Every shred of hope that I have had in life is gone. I thought there was even a small bit of hope, but not for me. This whole thing has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt one thing: I am not meant to be happy, and in my life, good things are not meant to last. I am not meant to succeed, and my hopes and dreams are never meant to be. In one month, when I go back to America, I will have nothing going for me; it will be the beginning of a sucky life. I hope that life ends before I go back to America to stay. I'm sick of life.

(I'm still not gonna kill myself, but if someone else does me in, all the better. It'll save me decades of failure and misery.)

Happiness and success for me were never meant to be. I have no future. Someone, please, if in one month's time I have not found something, please just shoot me or something. I'm sick enough of life as it is, but if that happens, I have nothing to look forward to, nothing to aim for and pretty much nothing really to strive for or to get me through the day. All I'll have is memories that will never be relived and dreams that will never come true.

Facing those I left behind

Saying good-bye is sometimes difficult, especially when saying good-bye to the few people who were not part of the problem.

I was out shopping today when I decided to have lunch. Two of the students I had taught at the job I had just quit immediately recognised me and started talking to me. So, we started talking for a little while ... but then one of them asked when I was going to be coming back.

I didn't know how to break it to them. I had said before that only 5 or 6 of the students had any respect for me at all, and here I was with two of them. The truth is, I had made the decision already, and there is no turning back. Aside from them and very few of my other students, all of my students disliked me. All of my co-workers hated me with a passion and thought I was the biggest screw-up going. My boss saw me as troublesome and everything I did as bad. From even before day one, pretty major details (such as the fact that I needed to know Korean to do well in the job) had conveniently not been told to me until it was too late, leaving me in a situation where there were some classes in which I had to come up with an entire lesson and present it in a language they could not understand without any help whatsoever from anyone who knew Korean. Aside from these two and the few other kids I already mentioned, the job had done some pretty major damage to me, to the point where, as many of you might have known, I had seriously wished I had never existed at all and that someone would just kill me already. It's possible I may be banished for life from Korea if my former boss has his way. How do I explain that, though, to a pair of Korean grade-schoolers without them thinking that they were part of the problem when they were two of the very few people involved who weren't?

So, all I had to say is that I had given up. I had run away. I'm off to a far-away country (even though Japan isn't THAT far away) in a few days, and I may never be able to return. I'm not sure if they completely understood the permanence of the situation; unfortunately, they may still be waiting for a long time to come (they still called me their teacher throughout the whole thing). At the end, we exchanged e-mail addresses and said our good-byes.

I didn't say this to them, but my wish is for them to never become like me. I hope that they find the courage to confront their problems rather than running away from them. I hope that they actually find success in life. Above all, I hope they don't end up becoming the messed-up and overall bad person that I am. I hope they never turn their backs on those who care about them. That goes for all of those who I have abandoned. I hope none of them grow up to be the rotten, spineless wimp I've become.

I also hope they don't wait for me. Not only am I probably never going to return, but also, I'm really not worth waiting for, not even for a day.