Maitta! Always - Daily Amazing Confusions -

The end of the year, I have few words. In the beginning of year, I post on this blog everyday. To the end of the year, my posts have less and less words, but it is still quite an achievement to post more than 500 times a year every day.

When I count numbers in the bath, I did without thinking. I know that now I've learned numbers from 1 to 1,000 by heart. I also know that half years ago, I hadn't really learned by heart how to count numbers in English. When I began the habit of counting numbers this summer, I often had to think what would come next. This thinking time prevent me from speaking smoothly, and even simplest things like counting numbers, it happens. Just counting numbers in the bath has told me a lot about what fluency is like and some of problems to solve to speak English (and Japanese) fluently.

Today I went to Sendai station in spite I was off work. I had two coffee tickets of Starbucks, which expire on the end of January, and I wanted to use them before they expire. At the shop I ordered soy latte Venti with extra shot of espresso. I was so tired that the extra shot was a little bit heavy to me. After lunch I went to a discount store and bought a film for Kindle Fire HD. I replaced the film while riding train. While covering Kindle with the film, the screen should be clean and free from dust. The covering work should also be done carefully. If you do in a rash, there are foams between the screen and the film, and you have to do again, and the more times you try to do, the less clean the screen, which is less desirable. After five or six times of retry, finally I succeeded in replacing the film. There is some dust remaining between the screen and the film. Then I took photos of myself with my Kindle. I was a little disappointed because I looked older and less neat than ...

I finished writing new year's greeting cards. I have a few people to send ones. I wrote messages and illustrations with my ball point pen. I hear that some people send tens or hundreds of new year's greeting cards. Such people use printing services or use printers and a little bit of handwriting messages. I can hardly imagine what I have hundreds of people to send greeting cards, but I imagine that probably it's what people doing important jobs is like.

I'm off until January 5, next year. All work days for this year have ended. I'm really relieved. I experienced a few mental crises in this year, struggling with coping with basic business communications. I made a great progress in skills in editing web pages. This is thanks to the opportunity of Abilympics. I prepared a lot for this skill competition and learn a lot of things about web pages and web programmings. There is one sad thing about my workplace. It's set as a workplace for disabled people in Sendai, however now I'm the only employee with a disability who regularly go to the office. I hope in the next year we'll do wonderful work with wonderful staff members with and without disabilities.

This evening I counted from 1000 down to 1 when I had a bath. It's for the first time in recent weeks. I don't remember any time I counted this many after December came. I was too tired to count many in December. I counted from 300 for a few times. These were the best I could these days. Today I could because I has been released from the burden of work for this year. I'm thinking that one of the simplest habit like counting numbers in a bath is not easy because our physical and mental conditions vary so much. Continuing a simple habit sometimes take us so far, and my counting habit helped me improving English pronunciation and speeches. I hope to improve my English speech by continuing simple habits like counting numbers in a bath.

In the morning these days, I'm so tired that I move slowly. I don't know what to do. When I listen to the music of favorite games I played many years ago, I feel a little bit relax. In this way the time of breakfast come, and prepare for going to work.

It hurts as if I had bruises on my legs and hip, but it's really a pain from stress and anxiety. I stopped several time when I had to walk to work from Sendai station. About 10 people passed by. Probably more than 100 people passed by since I arrived at the station until I arrived at my workplace. I guess this morning I couldn't overtake anyone walking after I arrived at Sendai station. I walked so slowly then. I jogged and overtook a few people from home to Ayashi station where I take train to work. I have to jog to catch train, because I don't have much time after I leave home.

I wish the true light be in your mind.

Today I went skiing. I learned that it's difficult to balance when skiing. Especially I need to twist the opposite upper body when I turn to the right, in which I stand on the left leg. Skiing has been teaching the understanding of what is standing straight like.

I prepared for skiing. Tomorrow is a national holiday. I was so tired that I'm not sure I will really able to go. My stressed and unbalanced head told that it wasn't safe to rest and relax in the bath today. I was afraid that I would be faint in the bath. Skiing is a good way to release myself from daily stresses, but it doesn't always assured that I feel great in the next working day.

Me the beginning of the weekend, anxiety. The anxiety that I might begin to scream any time with the last straw. The anxiety that I can't imagine what I would do when I fall into panic. I've felt these anxieties once in a while after I began to work at the age of 35 and when I went to university in my 20s and when I was doing hopeless job hunting in the first half of my 30s. Speaking about my anxiety may not encourage anyone, but I believe that it's far better than I resort to any destructive behavior when it be too late and my anxiety be too strong to control and recover from.

Christmas is a few days away. Today we celebrated Christmas at church.

Today I visited the mental clinic and got medicine for 3 weeks. After that I had a coffee break and later I had lunch in a Chinese restaurant. By the time I was about to come home, I felt a little bit uneasy in my stomach. It was probably out of my tiredness. I didn't feel like drinking a cup of coffee when I came home. I made a cup of instant coffee anyway. It was organic coffee. I had known that organic coffees are much gentler to stomach than typical coffees. The coffee didn't upset my stomach at all. I again felt that how gentle organic coffee is.

I've just noticed that I've seldom read back my posts in this blog, the only English edition of my blogs. I guess I probably hate to know statistics of the blog would show that the best reader/audience of my blog could be myself. Isn't this sound much lonely? On the other hand, in my Japanese blogs, one for my personal blog, and one for my workplace, I often feel that the person who wants to read my posts I guess is myself. Here's an episode to show this. A few years ago I wrote a post about TOEIC, a popular English test in Japan. There I wondered why on the Internet I hardly see articles of this English test and mentally or intellectually challenged (young-adult) people. (Personally I think foreign-language tests include some ingredient of intellectual tests) Some month later, the same question aroused in my mind and searched for the internet. The first page I saw was my blog post I had written beforehand. I've experienced similar results with some other...

This year I've already posted on this blog 485 times. This is much close to a goal I set in the beginning of this year. I set the goal that I post either every day or 500 posts for this year. Now 15 left to post, and 13 days left. In the beginning of year, I have a lot I want to tell someone about my characteristics, especially ones related to autism spectrum disorders. I also had a lot I wanted to tell how I struggled to find a job. Soon after I'm tired with my daily work and I was missing point in talking about myself as with a kind of autistic disorder. I was beginning to think that my weakness in communication can be overcome with an effort, which is incompatible with views from some adults with similar disorders. These days I simply haven't have very good idea for blog posts, because I'm even missing everything I'd like to tell because I've been too tired to form any thought or if I could have, I couldn't have put it into words. Continuing to po...

I often listen to newscasts spoken in English. I usually listen to these newscasts repeatedly. In many cases, I understand the point of the news only after I listen to them several times. I sometimes wonder that I seldom talk about news I listen to. I guess the newscasts I've listened to hardly has affected to my spoken English. Today when I listened to a newscast, I tried to translate word by word, and noticed that vocabulary and topics for the newscast are usually a little bit too heavy for daily conversation. Probably, this is a reason why my English conversation hasn't much improved no matter how much and how often I listened to newscasts spoken in English.

An piano app on Kindle is fun, but it consumes battery a lot. I've hoped that if I have some kind of portable piano, I'll enjoy music more. Some smart phones are said to have this kind of apps. I looked for one, hoping if there is one which runs on Kindle. I found "Real Piano", a free app on android, and checked if it's available on Kindle and it is. I lost no time installing and playing the app. It's fun to specify sounds of musics I listen frequently. However, thinking about sounds uses a lot of mental energy, as well as the app exhaust a lot of battery on Kindle.

When I'm kind of mentally out of shape, I tend to spend long lazy time even until I can sit and relax. Yesterday morning I listened my internal scream before I actually cry out loud. I actually endured silently and didn't shout. In my case when I listen something which doesn't sound outside, it's usually my internal voice or noise I'm prone to make but I barely refrain from making.

Yesterday I was so tired that I could walk only like a penguin. Today I had to walk like a penguin for another reason. The snowy sidewalks. By the time I was to leave from work, it was snowing and the road and the sidewalk was covered with snow. When I got off the train, the snow got even deeper and more slippery. I wasn't so tired as I had been the morning before yesterday, but I ended up in walking home like a penguin on the slippery sidewalk.

There are 950 meters from Sendai station to my workplace. In the morning usually it takes a little bit more than 15 minutes. When I'm heading for home I hurry from the office to the station in less than 10 minutes. This morning it took more than 25 minutes. I was so tired that I could only walk like a penguin. It took more than 2000 steps from the station to the workplace. When I left from work, it was less than 10 minutes left for the train, but I managed to catch the train. Regretfully, I didn't count steps, but if I had counted, it would have made a great contrast from 2000-step penguin walk in the morning.

Gravity is trying to wipe me out of my skis. The bindings and ski boots are holding me tight, so I'm barely on my skies. Keeping myself on the skies is the work to prevent gravity to wipe me out of the skis.

Skiing is fun, but after I ski too much I feel much tired. Everywhere in my body sores, especially around my calves, ankles and surprisingly, around my ribs. Today was the second day of the training session for skiing instructors. In the session, participant learned how to teach parallel turn from wedge turn. Since I haven't actually had an opportunity to teach someone skiing, I took the lesson passively, and didn't imagine how to communicate my students. I can't imagine whether I'm going to teach someone skiing in the future, but still, I need to be able to show and explain how to improve beginners' skiing, since I've been certificate as this position.

I went skiing for the first time in this 2014-2015 season. I participated in training sessions for skiing instructors. I participated in it because it was kind of compulsive. If it had not been compulsive, I wouldn't go skiing in this weekend. After I safely finished my first few runs, I thought to my self, "I still kind of like skiing, but these days, regretfully, I don't have enough mental capacity to recover from tiredness from work and my daily life and make time for skiing." Once I'm in the situation where I am to ski, certainly I find that I kind of like skiing, but now I hesitate to say "I make every effort to make time for skiing, coping with my daily stresses." On the other hand I can confidently say "I make every effort to cope with my daily stress and continue to work." Skiing is still one of my hobbies, but it's something I might choose to drop if I want to make a progress in my work.

I've gotten better from cold. Still, I've been feeling fatigued since this morning. I'm slow in doing everything these days. In spite I get up before 6am, the time I have to start for work is felt on a blink of eyes. This morning the word "I want to die" was on the tip of my tongue, but what I exactly felt was just, "I'd like to spend time relaxed not in a hurry".

I like to listen to BGMs of computer games. Sometimes I bought soundtracks of these games. I also like sound effects. Especially ones of Dragon Quest is unforgettable. When I select a command, when I cast a spell, when my turn to attack come, and when enemies attack, the sound of them is strongly engraved in my mind. As technology advances, BGMs has been much advanced and has become much more acoustic, so when I hear sound effects unchanged since its earliest series, I fees somewhat relieved.

I'm trying to write something. Considering cure of my cold, I think ,the shorter the time in front of my PC, the better, but I don't come up with any idea. Wasting time in front of my PC, I noticed that I'm looking for information about public ads, some of which were so scary and traumatic that I remember many times. I have had no idea of talking about public ads, but I've found myself curious when I look for scary ads when I have no idea what to write in front of my PC. When I was in university more than 10 years ago, I was writing an email. I hadn't been used to writing an email, so it took many hours for me to make a response for an email. I found myself looking for some scary ads while I was worrying that my email was either impolite or strange.

I've just looked for information about how to cure cold. I've just known that working on your PC is bad for curing your cold. So I'm thinking that I need to blog as brief as possible. The shorter the time in front of my PC, the better for cure for my cold.

My movement is slow. My thought is slow. This has been since I caught a cold. I've just come up with a few words in front of my computer. My tongue is also slow. I bathed today. I tried to count down, but I could only slowly. It was a good pronunciation practice anyway. I'm going to be slow to sleep, which I have to avoid if I want to cure from the cold. I'm doing my best to finish this post to sleep as early as possible, but the cold has been making me everything slow since I came home. It was fortunate that the cold didn't make my work slower.

Yesterday the low temperature was 2 degree below zero. Today it was zero, and the roads were covered with snow. I need my gloves and my coat on when I go out.

In the middle of November, I caught a cold. I couldn't be cured completely before I go to Nagoya to participate in Abilympics. In Nagoya, I needed to block coughs by taking medicine. After the trip to Nagoya, my cold seemed to cure, but I couldn't take enough rest and hadn't been cured completely even recently. Yesterday it was so cold outside and inside that my cold has gotten even worse. Fortunately I was able to sleep during the entire afternoon. I hope it help me be cured from this lingering cold.

I had a small reunion this night with a friend of badminton club when I was high school. We had a nice conversation. I was sad when I heard news that a few of my classmate have died and a few got involved in some troubles, and realized that we are much blessed, even though we aren't rich and at high status at all, but we have gotten along so far supported by many good people.

At work I check data back and forward again and again, being afraid of a mistake. Recently, I've been so much of perfectionist that it take much longer time than ever to get off a train, leave for work, and leave the workplace home. Adequate sleep, one hour longer than normal, will be continue to be needed not to make my state even worse.

Treated as if there were not such a person as me. As far as this blog is concerned, it's no problem to me. Now is not the time to be treated as there is a person as I am. The idea I can show in this blog, with the limit of writing in English, is too incomplete to tell someone something valuable. I hope, in the future, this blog will be recognized by several people as I'm showing my unique view fully from my standpoint and they will make the best out of it.

It's dark in the morning around this time of the year. When I wake up near 7am, time to prepare for going to work tend to run short, and I still feel a little tired even after I fully sleep. I need to wake up earlier. I've just set the alarm of the alarm clock for 5:40am. I've already set one of my watch for the same time, 5:40am, since I was on the previous job 7 years ago.

I've come to understand spoken English much more after I learned some tips for pronunciation. Now I often do a few types of "swing practices" of my tongue and lips. Counting numbers in a bath is one of them. I do another type of "swing practice". I listen to a certain podcast of spoken English, for example a news cast, and I move my tongue and lips without actually making sounds. I've, however, come to be able to imagine what sound will be made next. From this experience, I understood that any spoken language come primarily with sounds, and secondarily with letters, therefore learning sound is the most important if I have ears to listen.

I have every reason to let stress dominate over me. I'll sleep as soon as possible at night and take as many as possible, and if I'm able to wake up early, I'll do daily things and write something for my blogs and social network sites.