Maitta! Always - Daily Amazing Confusions -

How long has it been since I swam last time? It's been about five months. I went swimming until last November if my memory serve. I didn't go swimming in the winter, and I went skiing instead. Won't you go skiing this season any more? Probably yes. I'm thinking of Gassan, Yamagata for the second weekend of may, if weather and my condition permit. How was your swimming today? My condition was not so good. My left inner toe was sore and I didn't feel like walking long. Maybe swimming might be fine, I thought then. Actually I managed to swim, but my performance was low and I couldn't move my body fast. How many people was there in the pool? About five adults and three children. It was not crowded. Most of the adults swam as fast as I did. How do you feel after swimming? Not so bad, but not great. I hope I feel like walk long on Saturday or Sunday morning.

Beginning of The Golden Week. Tomorrow, Friday, is the first holiday, the Day of Showa. Surprisingly no Monday is holiday in this holiday period. What to do? Eating out, and walking more than 10 kilometers a day, weather permitting, for example from home to Sendai station 13.5 kilometers away from home. Also, study web coding and design to improve my skill for work, and do some cleaning. But first of all, having a lot of sleep hoping to recover from tiredness and mental distress I have been feeling these days, probably from small things in daily life.

Being always tired was problem. Showing or telling that I was always even more tired was bigger problem. And becoming hard to aware of my tiredness, and incapable of telling that I'm tired is much bigger problem.

This morning: 1.2 km before breakfast and 1.9km for the walk to my workplace from Toshogu station. I had canned coffee on the way of the walk to the office. As to work, in the morning it was OK. In the afternoon it wasn't bad except for I had sore right knee and left inner toe. Walking a lot before I get used to may be the problem.

Electric meter and boxes. Pantographs, and other devices over the roof of electric trains. Wires and insulators, poles and signs on it, and signals and signs for train operations. These are things I often see when I'm tired or in mental distress. These are among the things I'm enthusiastic about. Another part are automobiles and things related to roads. I have learned a lot of words about these things, but they hardly helped my communication. This learning may seem useless, but it was good for me in that by learning these words, I obtained mental stability to some extent, although it appeared to be at cost of opportunity of communicating a lot with other people.

This time I enjoyed the onsen. Like on Saturday, April 16, I went skiing to Zao Hot Springs Area. Today, for the first time in 8 days I enjoyed skiing. The snow has melted on the half of slop, so the area to ski was very limited. I wrap up skiing before noon, and I took a dip in the hot spring. I could have continue skiing, but I chose conditioning and having a good rest for Monday.

The pace of posts in my Japanese blog is gradually falling. These days about twice in a week. Before I began to work I posted even more than 10 times a week. The low pace these days, I think, is because I am doubting the way of communication I have done in a blog. I also think that my desire to tell someone something for good or for bad has become much weaker. In the period I posted on my Japanese blog the most, I wanted to tell how I had been and how I was suffering, as well as whatever trivial thing I thought. Now I'm thinking it may not good that I appeal that I'm suffering in public, because blogs basically make our voice public worldwide. In spite of annoying tiredness I have felt so much and so often, I also know that I've gotten a lot helps and I'm in a blessed condition, which discouraging news tell us daily that there are a lot of people who are really in need. These make me think rather than write, and slow the pace of blogging. Then why is this triv...

This week I restarted exercise walking after the break in the winter. I walk either in the morning, evening, or while I'm going to work. I feel a bit heavy at first, but I will get used to the habit.

It was not only me who are walking in a tired manner. I saw a few business persons walking in a tired way on a pedestrian deck 400 meters away from Sendai station this morning, after I left Starbucks after getting a cup of coffee. I had felt miserable when I left the train because I couldn't walk straight. I only could limp. Sometimes I was the slowest of pedestrian who walked the entire building of Sendai station. Sometimes I overtook some people walking at a little bit faster than them. My pace of walking was so unstable. I even felt like shouting out loud, I actually didn't though. The business persons I came across probably work hard day to day, and don't have enough time to cope with stress. I am fighting stress fighting every day, and I have been thinking it would be much tougher fight than many people because I'm on the autism spectrum. Today I learned to see things from a different perspectives. Many people are fighting with great tiredness through w...

Sometimes I think of myself as a bicycle. I'm not riding one. I'm one. When I am to stand still, sometimes I feel that I have to stand on a severe balance as if a bike stand still without a stand. When I am about to walk or run I become much stabilized. Of course walking and standing make me as much tired, and running even more, but standing still, and sometimes sitting still require me severe balance, probably not physically but mentally.

Fully equipped with fluorescent lamps. I found that on the train home in the evening twilight today. When I road the train it was still light outside. I watched the video of my skiing the other day. Minutes later, I felt sleepy and dozed off. After I woke up, a fluorescent lamp on the ceiling of the train was wearing out. I found out another important fact. Lamps were fully equipped on the train!! Looking carefully on the ceiling lamps were equipped on each slot on the ceiling. Some lamps had been removed from the slots to save electricity after the earthquake 5 years ago, causing nuclear power plant accident and shortage of electricity. If my memory serve, room lamps were not equipped on the train at least 2 years ago. Therefore, today's finding about lamps on the train surprised me so much.

"Don't show tired face." I heard a voice. This was probably from one of my friends when I was in university. It's been already more than 15 years since then. But why now? Certainly I've been tired recently, and at work it's not a good idea for me to look tired. The mood of the workplace will be better if I'm able to behave as if I were less tired. Now the problem is how to look less tired and how to cope with my tiredness. Showing myself less tired is one of the things I'm making efforts the most. As for coping with my tiredness, scheduling will become more important. So far I have seldom used calendars or agendas, but making use of these item from now on will probably be the key.

Sunday morning, I went to a worship service. I was so distressed that I couldn't help drawing picture and drinking a lot of water. From 11 a.m. to 12 a.m. I was almost non-verbal. I felt slightly better when the wife of the pastor noticed that I had drawn pictures of automobiles. On weekdays, I make a lot of efforts to keep myself verbal. On Sundays, I feel so tired that I become almost non-verbal. It was not until I go through this non-verbal distress period that I have made a lot of effort to show myself verbal and normal enough to be able to ride on a train every day.

My 23th skiing in this season was in Zao Onsen (hot spring), Yamagata. In this morning I had already had stiff muscles from tiredness and been worried about if I could enjoy skiing, I enjoyed skiing until 2 p.m. anyway. When I was about to leave the mountain, I thought that I could use the hot spring to heal the tiredness from skiing, but I gave up because I didn't have enough time. I'm going to enjoy having a bath home instead.

Even when I'm too tired to work on them, languages and words in them are still there. Words are here and there regardless of whether I make an effort to acquire them. Even when I'm too tired to utter a word, words there can flow into me, and it's especially when I'm extremely tired that when words strongly flow into me and they leave me strong impression. This may be how I understand learning language effortlessly.

It seems that sleep hasn't fully been covering my mental and physical tiredness. I sleep 8 hours a day this week and yesterday with a paid holiday took a nap an extra hour in the evening. Today I still feel weary and sometimes I can't help flipping and clapping my hands and muttering something. The quality of my sleep may be the problem. I often see strange dreams. Especially I'm likely to see a dream about vehicles, automobiles and bikes, the brakes of which don't work well. I often see such kind of dream when I'm in stress.

Cherry blossoms are in full bloom last week and this week. The scenes are one of the finest in the year. I have taken a lot of photos of cherry blossoms, but for some reason I kind of like cherry blossoms and electric wires.

Yesterday I went to bed one hour earlier than usual, 9:00 p.m. In spite of that, this morning I felt so heavy that I wanted to stay on bed until 7:00 a.m. I had a lot of sleep, but considering my tiredness I want more. I have gotten a paid holiday for tomorrow. Although usually I think it's a good chance to stay up late at night before weekend or a (half or full) paid holiday, this time I would rather like to go to bed early this night too.

On the train home I was hungry. By the time I arrive home, I had become really hungry. I had upset stomach. The supper was nice. I'm not hungry any more, but I still have upset stomach. Is this another alert from my body that I'm really tired?

The sound of television: What I couldn't stand today. I was so nervous. At church I was totally wreck. Especially in the first an hour after I arrived there I couldn't help jump up and down, and saying something repeatedly to myself. I was panicked from one big change I saw today. This would make me have stiff muscles tomorrow. Probably the change reminded me of the flashback of 15 minute struggle before I finally said my own name. Good thing was nobody intended to hurt or bully me. It was already more than 30 years ago when I was a target of bullying, but when I'm nervous, I often obsessed about the thought that the atmosphere is bulling me... almost seeing illusion that people around is about to bully me. This is the illusion of incidents 30 years ago! It's a shame I was about to let this old illusion beat me and drive me crazy.

I enjoyed skiing today. This is the last skiing in this city in this season. Perhaps I may go skiing two or three more times in Yamagata in April and May. I was thinking of playing games on weekdays, but after I came home time has passed just viewing information about Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy on wiki sites about them. I think I'm healthy in my body, but in my mind I doubt it. Especially I feel that I'm too tired to take action if I don't have to, especially when I'm off duty in the morning and at night, and on weekends. Besides that I tend to repeat checking on the seats if my properties aren't left behind, even when I hadn't put out anything, and even if I couldn't take a seat. I feel how stupid myself was when I was obsessed about property check and began to check seats other passengers had left. There may be something of the passengers, but I was checking if my thing was left behind at places I hadn't been even there.

Was this a tough week? I wasn't aware until I couldn't help flipping my hands, almost clapping, frowning, flinching, and winking over and over again on the train from work home on this Friday. 3 minutes after I got off train, I suddenly began to cry like a siren or alarm, then I muttered and shouted to myself, "I'm just crying wolf." Actually this is probably a sign of "strange noise" in which my mind is beginning to malfunction. Why "crying wolf"? It's probably I have heard a phrase "it's just crying wolf" in a newscast I hard on the train the day and the other day, and a voice of flashback of my elementary school period, saying "He's just crying wolf." Then, when I was in elementary school "crying wolf" has become the description of that kind behaviors and the causes of them, although I didn't completely understand what "crying wolf" is like. I understood the meaning, that cry some...

"He's nice guy. He has pure eyes in viewing world matters, which I have lost. I envy him because I have instead acquired much cynical points of view on them. It's a shame that he seems to love the word 'effort', but he don't actually like to make an effort." "But so doesn't you, do you, old man?" "You are right, regretfully."

Slow decision shortening and worsening my sleep these days. In a typical evening, I'm too tired to decide what to do and what to write next, just browsing news through Yahoo. These news often discourage me even more. News about incidents like terrorist attacks? Or provocative actions from neighboring countries? Bad results of favorite sports teams or players? Sometimes I wonder why I don't turn my eyes on good news like recovery from disasters or good performances of my favorite artists. Cure for this situation I'm thinking that I make the decision to do nothing but sleep as soon as possible. Facing up with tough situations would come after quality rest.

On the train home today I was describing myself last evening and this morning in third person. Like this. "He took a seat. There were enough seats to sit on the train. He couldn't catch the train which was due 5:46 p.m. He took the next train. Right after he took a seat, he took his pen from the pocket of his shirt and his sketchbook from his bag. That time, he began to draw a car, but he stopped and began to write something on the same sheet. He began to write his story of the night before and that morning, starting with 'He was worried if he would forget the next day was the day of bulky waste collection day. He wrote the reception number on the bulky waste tickets and checked the place of the items he was going to dispose of'. Tired of writing about himself as 'he' in 10 minutes, he began to read a book on autism. He was impressed about the story when applied behavioral analysis met the parents of children with autism, and national autism associa...

Tomorrow bulky wastes I asked the city to collect is due. A chair, a MD-CD radio cassette player, and a printer. I just wanted to remind myself not to forget next morning and start for work.

New week begins. New things may be happening especially at work. My anxiety is still there. I say to myself, "Let my anxiety be there. I move forward as time does".

I got wet in the first skiing in April. The forecast had said that it would be cloudy on Saturday. Actually it was foggy the road got wet, and I saw only 50 meters ahead in the mountain. It wasn't really rainy but after I skied for an hour, I got totally wet. I practiced the technique I had learned last weekend at a low speed. Considering the comments from other skiers, I didn't look like very stylish, but until I become familiar with the technique, my movement will be awkward, and this is an inevitable step.

March was over. Was I a little overloaded in the month? When I was back home, I felt really tired. I had already felt heavy suddenly when the work for the day was about to end, on April 1.