May 8th and decision-making.

This post is gonna be super-cheesy. I wrote this on May 8th, which is an important day for me.

I’m getting ready to do something kinda crazy. I’m quitting my pretty-swell job, moving across the country, packing up my stuff, leaving many of my wonderful friends, finding extended cat-sitters for my two cats, and plopping down some serious cash. For a 3-month immersive web development course in New York. Of course, there are some obvious perks: I love New York and want to live there again, I also have wonderful friends in the city, the tech field is booming with well-paying jobs, and it’s an interesting and creative field. This final one being the most important to me and I’ll try to address it in another “talking about feelings” post.

Regardless, it’s a big jump. And I can’t help but think about another big jump that I made exactly one decade ago(!). It’s so hard to believe that ten years have passed, but here it goes. When I was a teenager, I saved up all of the money I made working (side note: it’s way easier to save money when you don’t have to pay rent+utilities). I saved up all my money and put it towards a 3-month immersive Japanese language course in Tokyo. SO EXCITING, getting to learn a new language (which I later minored in), living in a new country (still my favorite place in the world), experiencing so many new things. On Saturday, May 8, 2004, me and two suitcases got on a plane to Tokyo and off I went and it’s probably one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life.

As I was making this decision about going to a coding bootcamp, all of these memories kept coming back to me. I thought a lot about how important that time in Tokyo was, how much it meant to me, and how much I learned. My Japanese isn’t anywhere near fluent these days, but I still have an extremely strong foundation in the language that I am confident would come back if I spent a few weeks immersed back into it. I thought about all the things I learned, the people I met, everything I saw, all the hours I spent wandering around Tokyo by myself, the museums I went to, the host family I have a life-long connection with, and an endless amount of other things, big and small. Matsuri, konbini, chikatetsu, tsuyu. When I think back on how much those 3 months affected me and made me grow as a person, it became nearly impossible for me to decline to make a similar decision ten years later.

Because of all of this, I have been thinking a lot about the kind of person I was ten years ago and the kind of person I am now. And thinking about the kind of person that I will be in another ten years (37? Ahhhhh!). The kind of person I WANT to be in ten years, and where I want to be in ten years. I even looked back at my old LiveJournal, which was a little bit horrifying and it was hard to recognize myself, but there I am. I’ve been thinking a lot about the potential path that I am currently on and the potential path if I take this leap of faith, and I only see an expanded potential for learning and growth as a person, which is just what I am looking for in life. I have a lot of feelings about this, but will curb them for now (for here).

So, as I post this new blog post at the start of a new adventure, cheers to May 8, cheers to giant leaps of faith, and cheers to always growing and learning.