There are days and there are moments.

We all have them. You know what I am talking about. Those times when something doesn't work out the way you planned, or when something is missing, gone without a trace its that time when the world feels like its crashing around you and you have no control in stopping it. I notice that this happens a lot to me. It can be the dramatic ear infection that has been going on for months or the dramatic decline of my computer's hard drive and loss of data from my backup, to simply a bad day at work.

Whatever that cause is for those bad days, its definitely the right moment to start thinking about all the awesome things in your life. Back home, for me, a bad day could turn into a bad month, then year, than life.. pretty quickly. I was quick to be down on myself for a lot of things that didn't go well/right. In college, some of my friends would comment on how I was too serious and needed to loosen up a bit. I know they meant well, but it hurt a lot when they said or teased me about this. I didn't know how else to react to things that didn't go perfectly when I should be in control of them. At some point last year, I realized that my inability to relax and let things happen as they do was effecting my life on a more holistic level.

Life wasn't happening the way it was supposed to.

Everywhere I turned, I wasn't living up to the standard of living that I believed was expected of me or that I believed my friends were living. Friends were getting married, having kids, graduating from Graduate School, traveling, working a job they liked/loved, going on adventures.... The list went on and on... No matter what I tried to do, I wasn't happy, I didn't feel accomplished...   Even when I had/did things that I thought were on the list, the outcome didn't yield the results it should have.

And then, I did something crazy. I applied to teach English in Japan.

It wasn't something new, I'd done it before. Three times before, in fact. Every time I applied I was one step closer to making the cut, but not making it so many times when many of the people around me got in on the first or second try... Well... I felt like a loser. A judo friend encouraged me to try again. He reminded me, I had nothing to lose and everything to gain if I made another attempt. He was right. Albeit, I am still realizing how right he was in pushing me to apply to JET. I couldn't have imagined the people I would meet, or the experiences I would have.  Moreover, I couldn't imagine what a step away from my life in America would do for my ability to accept that "shit just happens."

I don't want to sound like I am a new person. I am not. I still panic when things don't go well. Friday, I was brought to tears, when one of my lesson plans failed, at no fault of my own. It was simply one of the difficulties one faces when working with language barriers and a different personality. What I am learning is that there is so much potential for things to go right or for them to change that dwelling on that failed moment or day, is not seeing the whole picture clearly. There is still awesome in failure, its just a matter of perspective.