A Page Turning to the New Year

As 2022 closes and 2023 opens there are many things to think about and be grateful for. Often I look back to the saying; Happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise. Can I say I am all of these things? I think 2022 was a very good year in those respects. We made some major changes and those resulted in a lot of positives.

First; Health. I will put this first rather than "happy" since the other things rest on this one. Recently I heard someone say that health is like a table and other things we have in life are things we put on the table, like as options that we can engage with but if your health fails then just like the table failing all those other things slide off. Perhaps not a perfect metaphor but it does the job.

We are both getting older and so new aches and pains crop up. This is inevitable in some form or another, but we are both keeping active physically and mentally and trying to be careful in what we do with our bodies. Aya is doing yoga and pilates, and stretching at home to keep flexible and fit. I do running three days a week and weight training 4 days a week occasionally taking a day off. When the weather was nicer I was also hiking and biking once a week. We both do a lot more walking than we did as we are close enough to downtown and can easily justify not taking the subway but yet far enough that go anywhere and back will get us close to 10,000 steps. 

In early November I had a little health scare when I was hiking with a friend. I started to feel lightheaded and at first I thought that I was just feeling that because I hadn’t eaten breakfast, something I usually don’t do anyways. Then it got worse and my fingers started to tingle. Long story short, I realized that my blood pressure was a bit higher than normal on most days. Because we did blood tests the doctor also determined my cholesterol was a bit high. All that to say, I’m in middle age now and shouldn’t be putting whatever I want down my gob. I know many people kind of feel sad or lament reaching that stage of life but actually I feel pretty ok with it. If some slight dietary changes will result in me normalizing my readings and I can continue to be physically active, that is a win! 

Having made the  move to Sapporo I am much less stressed in my daily life and that has manifested in many ways. I’m sleeping a bit more and getting better sleep. I’m eating more healthily and in general eating less. I’ve also started intermittent fasting, something I kind of did before but now I’m really sticking to it, eating first at 11:30 am and then last around 4:30 pm. Of course, exceptions can be made if heading to dinner with friends or something but in general I feel pretty good with that. We’ll get a full check up in a couple months but in general we are feeling good. 

Second; Happy. The covid years have put a strain on this to some degree but still I’m happy that I’ve been able to see family and to keep in contact with them. I saw my mother both in December of 2021 (it still counts for 2022, right?) and then again in Poland in June. As always it is really fun to show her “my world” and I’m sure she will be seeing us in Hokkaido soon. I’ve kept in contact with my dad and we chat often, though I’ve not see him for about three years now so that is overdue but I plan to see him again this coming year. Hopefully that means he is coming to Hokkaido, but I won’t hold my breath. Aya’s parents came in November so I got to see them again after a nearly 3 year gap. They haven’t changed at all, a good thing. Finally, the cats are happy and healthy. 

Of course, friends and social life are also important in the “happy” category. The move from in person to fully online work means I don’t see people day to day in person and that has changed things a bit for me socially. However, because of the pandemic years I’ve not done a lot of socializing so that change was not as pronounced as it might be otherwise. One of my biggest concerns in moving to Hokkaido was that I didn’t know anyone here and there wasn’t really a ready made pathway, like a job with coworkers, to making connections. However, I’ve made a few friends and connections and now just about 5 months into our time here I am feeling like we’ve made a pretty good start at creating our community here. We’ve hosted some game nights, gone out to dinners, taking day-trips, etc. with friends and there are other connections that I’ve made in the community here so I feel like things are going as well or better than I would have hoped for. I see this only continuing. 

In addition, I’ve kept in contact with some of my “old” friends and that has been really good for me and I hope for them too. Perhaps it is a shift of getting to middle age, perhaps a bit of the explosion of video calling during the pandemic years but we’ve now got a few people that we regularly chat with. Aya has some of her friends around the world that she’s gotten to know from work or otherwise and every month or so she chats with them. Occasionally, depending on things she might see one of them in person as well. Funny enough, despite being pretty far from much of the world our friends like coming to Japan so there are opportunities to see people when they are in country.
We’ve also kept in contact with some of the people that we knew in Warsaw and continued to video chat with them, keeping up on each others’ lives. One of my old friends commented that we needed to not only hold on to old memories, but create some new ones. I thought that was an important insight and it got me thinking of how we do that, so far away from one another but still valuing each other’s friendship. One of my friends suggested he and I do a “book club” of two and that we meet every couple of months to chat and discuss the book. That has worked very well for connecting and I should say for pushing me to read new things and consider new ideas. 

Third; Wealthy. My time in Warsaw ended this year and I moved from International teaching to working only online. While this has pros and cons, it is a move we made deliberately and having the choice to do so is very fortunate. We have been extraordinarily lucky that we have been able to both work remotely freeing us to live anywhere and be flexible with our schedules. While we still have some work complaints, we realize just how lucky we are. In addition, we are both growing in our roles; taking on new challenges and rising in the ranks so to speak with our organizations. We both get paid well and fairly for what we do. I feel respected in my work and I think I work with some great colleagues who challenge me and work with me to improve our work together. I have autonomy to make changes and my superiors often put the reins in my hands to lead my team and to do what I think is best. I also feel like my work has meaning as I get to interact with young people and to shape how their learning experience can help them and, with my colleagues, to think about and implement changes to improve that experience in the future.  We've reached a point in life where our incomes are good, our savings and investments towards retirement are good, and though we are still checking the sticker prices of things we can be a more free in our spending. Perhaps the saying, you can have anything but not everything fits best to describe this feeling. One thing we decided to have was a home of our own, so this year we bought an apartment and renovated it to our liking. It feels nice to have a nest that is ours and even if we decided to fly the nest some time in the future we know we'll have a place that we can retreat to.

Fourth and last; Wise. Have I become wiser this past year? You bet! Since the start of 2022 I’ve completed 12 graduate credits towards my doctorate, with about 30 yet to go. I’d say that would be enough to qualify for the year’s quota of “wise” but wait! I’ve also begun to take Japanese lessons again. Having reached N3 about 12 years ago, but since they getting quite rusty, I decided to step back to studying at N4 level with tutors. I did this from September to mid December at which point I took the JLPT N4 test. I’m pretty sure I passed, though results won’t come out until late January. Continuing that, I’ll join a class of ten students in daily study from early January. This will mean that technically I am a full time student for Japanese. So, I’m grinding away at the rust and learning new things. I also shouldn’t forget to mention that the aforementioned book club with my old friend has opened up some insights for me. Most of our books revolve around philosophy and so these readings and discussions have led to me learning and thinking about new things. Lastly, I’ve learned a lot about myself and what is important to me. After almost 3 years of the pandemic and considering what I want, from where I live and what I put my work into, I’ve come to some tentative conclusions. Without saying too much about that, we will stay here in our current pattern for at least three years, probably more. 

So to sum up, 2022 I was happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise!