My last post was an eye-opener. It was the single best single-day performing post I have ever had, and I think it gained the most likes and followers of all of the posts I have ever written. And it had nothing to do with Japanese. In fact, near as I can tell, the only reason this was the case, was that I tagged it with a “blogging” tag. I guess that’s how the WordPress platform works. Doesn’t matter what you say, doesn’t matter what you blog about, only matters what you tag, who you follow, and who follows you back.

If I had a lot of posts about Japanese and I were passionately blogging every other day about one thing or other, this wouldn’t bother me, but that’s not the case. I’m posting very little right now, and that’s because I just don’t have anything that I want to share about Japanese. But I have things I want to share about other things. So screw it, I’m going to do that, because obviously it doesn’t matter one way or another. If you don’t like it, oh well. Better I post about random things than nothing at all, I guess.

I have, recently, been fighting a very existential depression. It’s the kind of depression that just kind of sits there and colors everything one does. I guess it could be categorized as “major” or “clinical”, though I am talking to my doctor about steps I can take on that side. But I don’t want to go too far into that. I do want to talk about some of the things that I’m thinking about, though..

Recently, here in central Texas, the nation’s largest waterpark resort opened. I’m not going to tell you how close it is to me because that would make finding me easy, but let’s just say I could easily drive there if I wanted. It’s the first waterpark of that chain opened in a metropolitan area. The other three locations are The Poconos, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, and Sandusky, Ohio. Every single one of those locations have incredible meaning to me, as they were a large part of my childhood. I spent last night finding each location on Google Maps, and am struck by how much the have changed in the forty or so years since I was last there.

I’m not going to go into the specific memories each of those places bring back, or why. But what I will say is that every single one of those locations have very powerful, and in many cases, pleasant, memories of my childhood. I have not had much joy in my life at all, but if I were to add maybe one other place, these are the places where I would say the most joy was to be found.

What happened to the joy?

It seems as life continues on, all of the joys recede into a blur of memory, the details mostly forgotten, but the feelings not. But it’s just a memory, and I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to say that right now my entire life is either chasing after the memory of a joy that will never be recreated, or distracting myself from the dawning and cloying realization that the joy is gone and it will never return. It’s all gone, and everything that ever made my childhood happy (which was not many things) is gone as well, never to return, and all I’m left with is the emptiness where the joy once was.

Japanese was, and is, a distraction. That’s all it ever was and all it was ever intended to be. I find no joy in it, I find no happiness in it, all I find is toil for little tangible reward and much cost. But the distraction is valuable in its own way. As with playing on my phone and transporting myself into the worlds of different, stupid games, until my brain is numbed and I’m bored, and I move on to the next thing. I have so many different hobbies, and they are nothing but a distraction as well. There is no joy, but there is distraction, and forgetting, if even for just a little while. I have no intention of going to Japan because I don’t want to be there when the distraction wears off and I’m slammed once again by the emptiness left by the joy that once was and is no longer.

This is not a happy post, but I’m not in a happy state of mind, and as I’ve said, this blog is for what I want to share, and I want to share this. Maybe, if nothing else, I know what to pray for now, and in that vein, maybe it has been helpful. Till next time, I suppose. Maybe next week will have some good news.