WHAT MAKES YOU EXCITED - It’s a new era!

I don’t know what it is, but recently life just seems really… alive?

Perhaps it is that spring has finally came and defrosted the ice that covered Sapporo. You can now get a good dose of V-D without worrying about losing bodily function from frostbite because you were walking around in a tank top in -10 degrees trying to feel some real warmth across your skin.

But here in Sapporo life is rebooting. It is Golden Week holidays currently.

That time of year when the the temperatures of 20 degrees are just right and cherry blossom petals litter the streets and salarymen actually take a holiday for once (well, they don’t have a choice anyway).

It ALMOST makes you feel guilty for wishing the snow would never stop.

And this year is a special Golden Week in Japan, since Emperor Akihito was finally allowed to abdicate after asking the government too many years ago if he could retire.

Because he is old and he has a life he wants to live too. But of course the government doesn’t care about individual feelings so much.

But anyway, Japan gets 10 days holidays. Cheers Akihito!

Also it is a new era - 「令和」 reiwa, the era of “beautiful harmony” or “dictate harmony” depending on whether you are an optimist or a pessimist I guess.

Just don’t make the mistake I did once by writing 「冷和」which means “cold harmony” but I still think that is better than dictating harmony.

From May, Japan has officially entered this new era. It kind of feels like I got New Years day twice.

BUT ANYWAY in light of a new era, I wanted to write about

- what makes you excited?

Do the things you do in your daily life make you excited?

I was recently asked by a close friend,

“how do you have dreams?”

It was an unexpected question, suddenly from nowhere.

Another friend walking by my side laughed and replied,

“what do you mean? Go to sleep?”

But this first friend was genuine in her question.

I didn’t know how to reply to her, so I asked about her hobbies, however she wasn’t interested in making her hobbies her dream.

She even went as far to say, “I don’t have hobbies.”

I kept thinking about her question after that day. I wanted to find an answer, any kind.

A couple of days ago I stumbled on a possible answer I think...

I was sitting in McDonalds sipping 100 yen coffee with a man I met just a couple of times before and a woman I had met just once. Somehow the three of us had decided we would make videos together. This was our brainstorming session.

As we spoke our ideas, my skin prickled with a sort of nervous tension and at every new suggestion I had images running in my head of them playing out.

I was excited about the possibilities.

Making videos has been a recent goal of mine, yet I realised my motivations behind making them has not changed from those of 9 year old me who sat in the library every break writing about magical ponies.

Stories make me excited. I love to hear stories and I love to tell them. People fascinate me a hella lot I realised.

And because I love stories so much I guess that is why I try to live my own life like one.

No one is going to keep reading if there is no excitement.

Life is the same. No one wants to keep living if there is no excitement.

(I don’t want to bring up salarymen and the Tokyo Yamanote line here)...

So instead of looking for a dream we should pay attention to what makes us excited.

Perhaps our body is like a metal detector and when you hover over possible dreams to dig for your skin will prickle and your heart will race?

Now that was a dumb simile. Let’s leave it there. I am meant to wake at 6 but it is already almost 2.

Goodnight and signing out!

I tried writing 'reiwa' !