Tokyo – New Job. New Country. New Life.
Here I am sitting in my weekly apartment hotel for the last evening after having spent the larger part of 2 weeks here. If these weeks have been any indication of the upcoming months, then it is and will be undoubtedly one of, if not the most dynamic, challenging, and intense periods of my life. A great thing nonetheless.
I have not yet fully realized my new life situation, as I have been rather occupied with work and focusing on the day-to-day necessities – what to eat, how to wash clothes, looking at apartments, opening bank account, and more of the sort. In a way, this has kept me very much stable and focused on the present. I would be lying if I said that I am not in the midst of a “slump” following my departure from Korea. It was very sudden and made for a hard landing in Tokyo (and continues to a degree). I literally came from a very high point in Korea, surrounded by people who I became close with – the most important facet of any location, and in a very comfortable setting (language, culture, and lifestyle-wise). The aspect of the importance of people has been made more and more clear to me as I gain more experience in different locations and cultivate more and more interactions.
I have certainly been reflecting tremendously the past days on my life up to this point, reminiscing of the past memories, what has enabled me to arrive to this point in my life, and just how fortunate I am. I strive to never forget this fact, it is too important to take for granted. I find that gratitude, hard work, respect, and modesty are all very key both to success and also to well-being. Along with reminiscing of my past life experiences (both professional and personal), I have become all the more cognizant of how unbelievably supportive my family and friends are, along with how difficult it is indeed to find honest and great people. The outliers so to speak ^^.
The issue now is to move positively in the forward direction and seek the best trajectories for the future.
One life to live 🙂
Too short to fret over the little things in the end.
Matthew/Matthieu/Mateo/매튜/マシュー
