About to put my laptop in the jail of a carry-on so I can leave promptly for work in the morning. I'm going to the inane training, because I have nothing better to do all day, and it prevents me from using PTO or awkward apologies despite the fact that a lot of people are gone.

I don't look forward to getting my shit onto buses and trains, but otherwise it should be fine.

Decided, since I have the object permanence of a goldfish these days, to make a list of random things I would like to do if I have time between doing things with bestie. Sometimes, when I visit her, she is playing games or something for periods of time when I have nothing to do but watch her and feel sort of stuck for my own amusement if that isn't all I want to do.

- rearrange and add to dreamwidth icons
- figure out some WIP to work on or start a new one
- download and prepare all the things I have to prepare to sign up for an absentee ballot since I have to do it anyway
- refresh my memory of what I have to do to get the special permission for unauthorized activities on my current visa so I can get started on that right away when I get back to work before it is due again on April 1

The kids at work had their closing ceremony/Christmas Mass on Saturday, and I had to go to it. It was fine, and I got to leave work at 1:00, which is the usual Saturday quitting time, but I'm not usually a Saturday worker.

Friday, I got my nails done.

This morning, I went to get some hair tinsel in my hair for the first time. I've wanted to do that since I first saw a girl at a middle school get them when I taught her.

Afterward, I went to church. I am glad I went and didn't flake, because the message from the woman pastor was really good, and I'm getting over my internalized weirdness about hearing a female minister.

It's kind of amazing how unfamiliar I find most Christmas traditions that aren't very secular and commercial. My early childhood was in my dad's most iconoclastic days; he'd gone from having grown up with very standard southern Baptist (not necessarily Southern Baptist) ideas and then got more into reformation theology/church history. He still is, but especially when I was little, he was really obsessed with the "regulative principle of worship" (the idea that unless the Bible specifically indicates that you should do it as part of worship that you shouldn't do it as part of worship) to the point that it kind of alienated a lot of people.

In a lot of ways, I am still kind of cynical along the same lines but maybe for different reasons? It's something I'm still working through.

In any case, my dad was Goin Through It about things that may have been originally syncretistic or whatever, so when I was very small, we didn't have Christmas trees and stuff. Later, it softened a little, but when I was like 3-6 or 7, it was a bit of a family drama at times that my parents were "depriving me of being normal" by insisting that I not hear lies about Santa Claus from them and not have a Christmas tree at home.

I was a little rule-follower and kind of superstitious (as many little kids are) in addition to what my parents are telling me, so when my grandmother had a light-up "angel" on top of her Christmas tree, I hid my eyes from it and everyone thought I was a freak because I thought it was a bad "idol". My parents didn't tell me to do this, but it was my toddler brain trying to follow through on what I had been taught to understand.

Anyway, as a result of the particular religious flavor I grew up with, Christmas is a weird time for me. Doubly so because I am working at a Catholic school and just kind of feeling my way through what it is I believe. I still very much identify as a Christian, but I guess I'm about the age my dad was when I was born and going through the process of untangling some of my long-held assumptions as well.

All of this to say that I feel a little dumb and culturally stunted by the fact that I do not know religious Christmas hymns and carols and whatever as well as other people do. Like I know SOME of the words but most of the hymns I grew up singing were like early protestant stuff, which I still like honestly, but as the closing hymn at Tokyo Union today, we sang:



We did so at a somewhat lower tempo and with the organ (or maybe just a deep-voiced piano, I don't know), so there was something about it that was even more moving and kind of Cool in a way I find hard to describe.

I just find that some of the music that I've been exposed to attending this church and, rarely, a PCUSA church back in Chattanooga, talks a lot more about justice and the social obligations of a Christian in the real world and not just spiritually bypassing and looking forward to heaven or the end of time or whatever.

I don't think there's anything wrong with looking forward to eternity in some way, but I am deeply bothered by the whole "well, the world is going to end soon anyway" excuses of the casual American Christian nationalist death cult thing that bleeds through so much of American Christianity. But sometimes I just feel kind of lost and confused by the fact that I deeply hold my religious values and beliefs but also feel like a stranger to broader Christianity? Plus the fact that I am progressive and LGBT affirming. However, I feel like I am slowly experiencing some growth and introspection, which is nice.

Outside of my spiritual thoughts, one of my recent frustrations has been that I struggle with introspection more than I used to. I feel like so much of my mind and time is spent entangled with my professional duties as a teacher that I sort of lost even my continuity-of-self at times in it. I think about how I used to have this very vivid inner world of daydreams, but I lost it for a long time (maybe since I've been back in Japan basically but sometimes before that, too).

In some ways, my current job is a lot better than any job I've had before in terms of giving me time during work hours to do all of my duties, but then sometimes the hours are extended anyway, and while I love and adore functional public infrastructure and transportation, relying on public transportation means that even though I am not actively mentally involved in vehicle obligation that I spend even more time in vehicles than I did back home when I was so frustrated by always being stuck in a car.

That said, I'm very grateful that I am occasionally feeling some kind of improvement in terms of my sense of self-continuity, and I would appreciate if any older adults have ideas for how to keep going with that. I miss myself and my daydreams and my Fanfic Idea Generation, lol.

I'm also very grateful for just how much utterly better my life is than it was this time one year ago.

2 days and I am flying to Canada to see best friend for a little over a week.