Not having kept the best schedule of late, it’s time to try something a little more structured.
You’d think that being the left-brained type would mean that I naturally seek routines for every aspect of daily life. In some cases this is true—I have acquired a few routines since coming to Japan, and that’s made me more efficient in some respects. But recently I haven’t really had much in the way of any kind of routine. In this kind of situation I tend to lose focus of the things I need to work on.
For example, over the past few weeks I’ve had several days where I just didn’t feel like doing much of anything. I did the things I had to (like English classes or cleaning the Family Center or buying food) because I had to, but other things fell by the wayside (like filling out forms for TEAM or cleaning my apartment or spending time reading the Bible and praying). It’s not that any of these things are hard or exhausting—I just wasn’t motivated to do any of them. Not really culture shock, per se, because having been to Japan and understanding an appreciable amount of the culture I haven’t really noticed any culture shock this time around. More of a rollercoaster-style set of good days and burnout days, where I can be productive one day and useless the next.
I haven’t been consistent about getting things done ever since I got here (really, since even before I got here). During the World Cup, especially, I would often stay up late to watch the matches that aired in the middle of the night in Japan. At one point my sleep schedule was practically reversed—I would watch the 23:00 match, go for a skate at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning and get back in time to watch the 4:00 match before going to sleep around sunrise at 5:30. I think this in turn affected my attitude and level of energy during the day the most.
So the first thing on the list to change is to have a regular time to go to bed and a regular time to wake up. After that I can set aside time every morning to read the Bible, along with regular times throughout the week to do things like cleaning the apartment and the Family Center. Language study fits in as well—usually afternoons there, I think—and all of the one-time tasks get juggled around that. So far things have been good for the first two days, but we’ll see how it pans out over the next week or two.