The Epilogue.

Well, well, well. Look who came craaaaawling back. I'm back in the land of the living after an incredibly turbulent couple of months. Talking about it now almost feels like a eulogy to the 'what if?'s rather than the reality of what was. As it turns out, despite my best efforts, my luck and health didn't improve much and I had to admit defeat and come home. Beeeeew. I'll not delve into, or dwell on it too much, but whatever it is affected me enough so that I couldn't have any life whatsoever outside of work. In that kind of situation where, everything you want becomes a dangling carrot, it's incredibly hard to let go, but eventually I had little choice. I'm not in any life-threatening condition, but it was easily the hardest turns of events I've had thrown at me, and I'm in almost constant state of relief that I got through it and got home. As with the majorities of memories though, I know I'll remember the good times, and hope to pick them up again once I hopefully get sorted out.

It would seem that moving from one situation to another one of relief is purely preferred because it's home, it's familiar, it's forgiving. There's a grounding in familiar faces, streets, food and weather that makes you re-fall in love with even the forlorn frailties of home, and get a fresh perspective on somewhere you had long felt gone stale. Like Scrooge's awakening, after his brush with The Ghost of a Japanese Christmas. What I've since learned is that it's easily possible for that kind of scenario to manifest itself as a honeymoon from out of the frying pan and into the fire. Not so much a 'the grass is always greener' situation, but the birth of new beginnings with their own mutated trials and tribulations that come at the cost of having lived, worked and travelled abroad, alone.

I'm aware that I'm probably not making much sense here, but without wanting to make this an elitist rambling, I would hope that others who have lived abroad, or away from home can understand the level of inarticulable confusion that I'm dealing with at the moment. The main one being job prospects. Everyone knows how difficult the job market is at the moment, but just how quite soul destroying it can be when you've worked hard to reach a level of job satisfaction, only to be unable to contain it, and then miss out on jobs way down on that very same scale, whilst being simultaneously over-qualified for is something, along with naivety, that has been a perilously steep learning curve for me.

People who know me, will know that I'm very self aware, and possibly too apologetic of my personality for it, but this is about the journey I've been on, and when you're unemployed, there are perhaps more personal, mental journeys than you care to wish for. I'm aware that this is all more than a little insular and self serving, but it's also quite cathartic for me in a way that I can't quite grasp. If other people read this and they relate to it, then I'd like to think the shared servility to our own psyches can somehow provide some kind of solution to my, or their predicament.

This is where I would normally mock myself, and now is no different. Deep as a puddle, me. The Caspian Puddle, ahah....ahah...........ahah. Christ, maybe I shouldn't have written this on the day of four job rejections, it's all a little bit sad face. Make no mistake though, this is temporary, I have no intention of allowing this reign of terror to have any lasting effect on my life. So long as the reign of terror doesn't become my life. My ambition to be the very best person I can be will never hide. For anyone that meets me during this time, I feel for you in a way that only Chaka Khan can comprehend.

It's a little bit of a sweet and sour (no pun intended) note to end this series of blogs on, considering the joy and intention in my earlier blogs, but even if this is only for me to read at a future time: right now, in this situation, having left not just so much, but so much unloved and short-lived potential behind to go to Japan, missing my family and friends tremendously, my time in Japan ending on an unhappy note, and then coming back to almost blindly rebuild again. Quite honestly, I don't regret it, and I hope I take the same risks again. I don't ever want to be a self-congratulating martyr behind my own regret. Look to the sun and you'll see no shadows, and all that. Now, let us dance like it 'twas 1967.