On Cars, Bikes, and Following Your Genius 車、自転車、直感を従うことには

Update from the future: Just to give you a preview of what is in this very long post: I am basically writing about my decision to stop using my car that I eventually did sell, and how I came to the decision. That’s basically it. If you’re looking for funny stories about farting and misspoken Japanese they’re not in this one. If you’re looking for quotes from transcendentalists and a dissertation on the advantages of bikes over cars, look no further.

Alright gang. We’re back.

I know, I know. It’s only been a week! Steven, you just wrote such a doozy, and now you’re coming right back around and giving us another other one, not a week later?

And to that I say, you bet your sweet bungus I am!

I’ve got things to tell you! And like I said, “A squid won’t cook itself,” well neither will a blog post write itself, and these things must be written, lest the moment pass, and they are forever gone. I believe, this is true with ideas, that with all ideas there is a certain window of action, that you have where you can seize an idea, and do something with it, make something out of it, or let it pass, and its moment will be gone. And perhaps you will have another chance at it, or perhaps not. This idea, the one I want to share with you now, is a fruit that has been maturing for some time, and I think it is now as ripe as it will ever be, and the time is as good as any to pluck it. So sit back, get comfortable, maybe grab a snack, some nice squid hearts, maybe a squid soufflé (I actually don’t know what a soufflé even is) and let me tell you about my little experiment in following my genius, and deciding to live life without a car.

The first thing I need to get at is the following your genius thing. I am not a genius, but I can follow it, and that is why I decided to stop driving my car for the month of March. Motorless March, I called it. I actually almost sold it, and even went to the length of calling up my dealer, taking it in to him, having him look it over, and then coming to his question, “Do you really want to sell this? Do you really really want to sell this?” and promising him that I’d really think it over, and after two of my close friends recommended that I try out a carless month first, and see how it goes, as a trial experiment, before fully plunging myself into the world of the no-car, only to find that it does not suit me all that much, and I am pained to go through the process of getting a new one, or to suffer with the ramifications of my poor and impulsive decision. But, while I did at their suggestion hold onto my car, prior to starting this experiment, I strongly suspected that I already knew what the outcome would be, and here we are, at the end of the month, and I can say that I was entirely correct in my suspicion. After an entire month without my car, I can say that not once, not a single time, did I think, “Man, I wish I could drive!” But what I did find myself thinking, time and time again, was the exact opposite, that I was glad that I didn’t have one. And so I will give you some examples, but you have already seen some, if you read my last post. On embarking on this experiment, somehow I had not even considered all of the merits of my decision to ditch the car and walk to school, but that came to me as I was writing that last post, and is even further support for the case of going without the car. So, I will give you some concrete examples, and what I’ve learned from this experiment, and the goals of this post then are two-fold – if this can be a lesson for you on following your genius, or a piece that challenges you to see your car in a new light, then I think I can say that this was a successful one!

First, on following your genius. I have mentioned genius a few times now, and what am I talking about? I am using genius in the way that our man Henry David Thoreau uses genius. I usually end my posts with quotes, but for this one, I need to give you a quote now, because this quote, primarily, along with some of Thoreau’s other compelling words on genius, was the catalyst, that brought me to cross that critical threshold between thought and action. So here is the quote:

“If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies. The faintest assured objection which one healthy man feels will at length prevail over the arguments and customs of mankind. No one ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for there were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal, – that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.”

It’s long, I know. Thoreau writes like this. Emerson does as well. Perhaps that’s why I am so enamored with them both. Thoreau is a man who catches star-dust, who does greet the day and night with joy, who felt bad for his jailers, when he was put into jail, for not paying taxes to the state of Massachusetts for something like seven years, because he did not support slavery, and Massachusetts was profiting off of and enabling the slave trade, at that time, and he felt that his jailers, after imprisoning him, thought that they had him confined – but he could not be confined, because in his heart he was free, much more than they, because while physically confined, spiritually he was as free as a bird. Actually, he thought they, and the state itself, were entirely pathetic, after that incident, as Thoreau was, taxes excepted, as good of or better than any citizen you could ask for, and was not in any way a threat to the state, and yet they imprisoned him. Thoreau lives by his genius, truly; that is one example, and another I could give is the whole fact that he moved out into the woods and lived there alone for two years, because he felt like he should, and he ended up writing the masterpiece, that this quote is from, that is Walden. I included the full length of this quote because I thought that, given that he includes them in the same passage, there must be a link between following genius, and catching star-dust, and when I think about this experiment, and even the outcomes of my walking to school, that there is a connection there.

So like I said, this quote is ultimately what got me to embark on this little carless experiment of mine. It is the reason why I pulled the trigger. About two or three months ago, I did something I had been meaning to do for a long time, and had never got around to, which was actually figured out exactly what my income and expenses were. Prior to this, I just knew that I was making more money than I was losing, and that was good enough for me. But I could only stand saying not being able to answer questions about my life financials so many times before I felt like it was necessary that I got the answers, and so I did, and I found that I was spending about 2万円 a month on car expenses, (about $200). I thought at that time, entirely jokingly, “Hey if I didn’t have a car, I’d save 2万円 a month!” And then this thought was followed by another, “But, of course, I need my car.” I can say now that not only did I not need my car, but in the same way that I was better off walking to school than driving, I am better off living without a car in all other aspects of my life, than having one.

In the days after I did that little, getting my affairs in order business, that thought of getting rid of the car kept coming back to me. I thought about all of the reasons why I needed my car – there weren’t many. I thought about all of the reasons I should give it up – there were many more. Why did I think I needed my car? Convenience, was one. Convenience on its own is hardly a good reason to do anything. Another, was freedom. Paradoxically enough, I found that I had more freedom without the car. That’s really it, in a nutshell. Why did I think I should give it up? This list is much longer. Obviously, for the environment. Also, for the savings. Those are good enough reasons, but there are other, more powerful, and less apparent reasons. I thought that, like walking to school, going without the car would put me outside of my comfort zone. After being here for as long as I have, as anyone inevitably finds themselves becoming after doing the same things for an extended period of time, I have gotten quite comfortable in many aspects of my life. I’m happy I can say that’s so, but if we take Emerson’s words, “People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them,” to heart, then it’s wise not to get too comfortable, and so I felt that this would be a good way to shake things up, raise the difficulty level on my life a bit, you could say. I will get into this when I talk about public transportation, of which, as a result of ditching the car, I now have many stories. The other of the more subtle reasons, I would say, was that I thought that getting rid of the car would force me to better prioritize my time. Having a car is a luxury, for me, and not a necessity. With it, I could visit my friends in the neighboring towns and cities on a whim, I could make trips to the grocery store, to the mall, to the 100円 store, when I felt like it, and I had many times come away from such trips thinking that they had not been all that necessary. Without a car, acting on impulse suddenly becomes much more difficult, in that sense. And so, the bar, or the activation threshold, for me embarking on any mission, quest, escapade, what have you, was now much higher, and I thought that, and I found that this was true, that it would force me to make better use of my time. And reflecting on it, I find that the same thing is true with my internet usage. I have no internet in my apartment. When I’m lucky, I can connect to my neighbor’s WiFi, but that WiFi is fickle, and will more often than not allow me to connect once a night, only to give me the results of my first search, and then dry up and return no more. When on that tenuous signal, I am aware that at any moment it could vanish forever, and that alone keeps me from attempting most internet activities, but often when I do try them, the internet will teasingly flicker on and off, and I will quickly lose patience with it, slam my laptop shut, and quit whatever I was doing. And this happens, the quitting, because whatever I was doing in the first place, was not all that important. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have tried to do it from my apartment in the first place, where the internet is so unreliable (I say the internet, it’s not even mine. I should say her internet, Nagata sensei’s.) When I really want to use the internet, I will either go visit Nagata sensei, or I will sit outside her apartment on the steps, where I can enjoy free-flowing, uninterrupted internet, and do my business. And I keep my business quick, because I’m most likely sweating, or shivering, with a sore rumpus, from sitting on a step of solid steel and concrete, and craning my neck down to look at the small, dimly lit screen on my lap, and so I am, because of all of these hindrances, efficient with my internet time. Unfortunately, as much as I would wish otherwise, I do have relatively low self-control, and if I had ample internet access I may not even be writing this right now, but would instead be watching English Premier League highlights on YouTube, or searching about how Rogain serves to promote hair growth (for a friend, of course), or something like that; something that I could be doing, but probably don’t need to be. By significantly raising the threshold for the ease of doing something, anything, you have to put in more effort to do it, and the decision to put effort into anything becomes more meaningful the more effort that is required. Thought, as well. Because now with my excursions, like with using the internet, the effort to action threshold has been raised, and I now have to spend a little more thought, and potentially a lot more energy, on whether I want to do something or not, and I think that this has been an incredibly effective way at delineating what in my life is worth my time, and what is not. I have turned down invites that I would have accepted if I had a car, because I didn’t. How interested was I, really, in going then? I have gone through the trouble of taking the time to learn how the busses work, and riding them, to get to the city to play soccer with some friends. That then, was clearly important to me. But not only has it forced me to weigh more considerately what is important to me, and what is not, but it has also forced me to plan out and be more efficient with my time. Before, I would go to the mega-superstore Trial. Trial is up on a hill and is out of the way for me. Because of the fact that it’s up on the hill, and I can’t even bike up that hill, in this entire month I’ve only gone to Trial once. Instead, I stop by Direx, as I pass there on the way back from Ozu High. I’d rather go to Trial, yes, and especially because Trial has my soba, and Direx doesn’t, and I’m actually pissed at Direx, because the last three times I’ve been there they haven’t had my soba, and I’m worried that they don’t even carry it anymore, and I’ve wanted to grab one of the store workers and say, “Hey, don’t you guys know that people like soba! You’re going to lose people’s business! Order more soba!” But even in my soba-rage, I can’t dump Direx, because it now just makes good sense for me to stop there. It is the most economical and efficient thing for me to do. Another point – I wanted to go to Kaldi, at the mall Hikari no mori. This is about a fifteen to twenty minute drive to the west. With a car, I would have gone. I wanted to get my natural peanut butter, which is way better than unnatural peanut butter (isn’t it weird to say that? But if what I get is natural, what else is the other kind but unnatural?) and my muesli (how do you pronounce this word?). Now it is an ordeal, and I had been mulling over when I would make the bike trip out there, when I was struck with the brilliant idea to ask Goto sensei, who I know lives in the Hikari no mori area, and frequents the mall, if she wouldn’t mind picking those things up for me the next time she goes, and I’d pay her back. And so, last weekend, after waiting a week, I got that sweet sweet Line message, “I’m at Kaldi!” And then I had my natural peanut butter and muesli, and I didn’t even have to go to the store. And when I say that paradoxically, I had more freedom as a result of my decision to ditch the car, this is partly why. While could be seen as now an increased reliance on others, I see it as a forced, economical restructuring of how I go about my business, and that restructuring has resulted in me coming away with more time, and less distraction. I can and will rope decision making fatigue into this, because why not – I’m even saving myself from having to make such decisions, about whether I should go to this or that store, to this or that event, to do this or that thing, as anything that I could, or would only do with a car, is immediately ruled out, and I consider it no more. You would think that because I don’t have a car, it takes me longer to get places, and so I would spend more time in transit, and would come out of this all with less time, but I have actually come out ahead, through virtue of the increased effort to action threshold (I keep calling it this and other things, I am not sure exactly what I should say here is, I keep thinking back to the concept of activation energy, in chemistry, which is the amount of energy that has to be supplied in order to make a reaction occur, and in this analogy, my action is the reaction, and the energy required to take the action consists of whatever might factor into the taking of the action, for example cost, time, benefits, etc.), and the fact that when I travel now, it is an experience, and so is never time wasted. That is another major point to be made about this, but I feel like I’ve mostly already made it in my last post, when talking about all of the beautiful things I get to do and see on my walk to Shoyo, that I don’t get from the drive. Whenever I go anywhere now, I go by either train, bus, bike, foot, or another’s car, and in any of those save the bike, I am not required to do anything but confirm every now and again that I’m still headed the right way, and then I can go back to fully engaging my senses in whatever capacity I like. In driving, you are a pilot, and while you can daydream, and sightsee, and enjoy the radio, or have a conversation, you can’t commit yourself to any of these things fully. On a bike, you do have to pilot, but that’s different than riding a car – that’s more sport than work. Riding a bike is exhilarating, especially in Ozu, where there is almost no level ground, where the roads are so narrow that you are almost crushed to the wall by passing cards, where the maze of cracked sidewalks and side-streets and street signs keeps you weaving, dodging, ducking, panting, coasting, endlessly engaged. And another perk about the bike is that you’re almost always in motion, and when you’re not, it’s simply a nice reprieve. Highways? You pass under them. Crosswalks? People stop for you. Traffic lights? Button you push, and turn green they will. (That’s a Yoda quote. It could be at least. I wonder if I thought to write that sentence that way because Yoda is green. The human brain is a mysterious thing..) When you finally do just have to sit it out at a light, you’re about ready for a break anyways. And the bike is the other reason why giving up the car brings more freedom. On the bike, you are truly free. You do still have to find a place to put your bike, that’s true – but bikes are much smaller than cars. I biked right into the heart of the city just yesterday, right into the heart of what they call the machi, the network of narrow streets, tiny stores, a densely crowded spot – I biked right up to the street that had the two stores I wanted to visit, and I leaned my bike up against a wall, and I stepped out onto the street, no worry about finding a place to park my cumbersome car, and at no expense. And on the way there, I passed car after car after car, stuck in waiting, mired in limbo, and I would fly right on by, with the sun in my face, with the wind rustling my shirt, with my heart pumping, and a medium grade sweat on my shins, because I wore thick sweatpants, and it was way hotter than I thought it’d be. As I passed them, I couldn’t help but think with smug satisfaction, “Suckers!!”

One thing about the car – the car keeps things out, but it also keeps you in. It insulates you, and that’s alright, when you need to be – but how often do we need to be? I’d rather be thrown out into the chaos of the world than snugly shielded from it. (Typed while sitting in a comfortable chair, at a comfortable desk, in a comfortable apartment, at a comfortable temperature, in some comfortable sweatpants..) But you get what I mean. I don’t want to be snug all the time; there’s not a lot to be learned in being snug – I want some action. When I made the decision to start biking, I knew I would have to be biking in the rain. This was something that would often come up when someone tried to suggest to me the folly of selling my car. “What about the rain?” They would say. Well, what about the rain? That would be a problem, if we weren’t living in the 21st century, and didn’t have such beautiful products as entirely waterproof synthetic body suits, but we do. This is what you see the students, the bikers, the motorbikers, wearing, in inclement weather, fully shielded from the elements of Earth like astronauts from the elements of space. I took a trip to Handsman, and got myself a similar suit, after trying on several, and deciding which country, of the pack of body-suit-producing, atrocity-committing countries all vying for my yen, I would give it to – and out of China, Myanmar, and Vietnam, I settled on Vietnam, as while they’re communist, I hadn’t yet heard about any recent atrocity committed by the Vietnamese. In this suit then, I am entirely impervious to whatever the wicked winds of Kumamoto want to blow my way, although large balls of hail would still take me out. When we talk about freedom, again, here is another example. As no one, under normal circumstances, naturally wants to be soaked by the rain, we tend to avoid it, and an umbrella helps with that, but you still have to deal with strong winds, if it is windy, and stepping in puddles, and finding a place for your umbrella, and making sure you don’t forget it, and if you do, making difficult decisions about how to get a new one, or waiting for a break in the rain, or biting the bullet and getting drenched in it. When you have a full body waterproof suit, none of this matters. You don your armor, and out you go, and there your worries end. In fact, what would before have been an annoyance, is now a joy, as it is incredibly joyful to walk about in the pouring rain, without a care in the world, to be completely impervious to it, to be able to laugh at it and revel freely in it. That is freedom, and it strikes me in similarity to that feeling I had on top of the mountain, standing there and looking the blizzard in the face, or in the onsen, finding warmth and moisture in the dry cold of winter – it’s a feeling of turning the tables on the elements, taking them head on, embracing them with open arms, defying them; and you can’t help but come away from such encounters with a little more life in you.

I talked about following genius. I had the thought then, coming back to me, that I should stop using my car. I did some pre-experimentation. I knew that the only real thing that could be a pain for me, without the car, was going to my special needs school, which is about a twenty minute drive from my apartment. Before going fully into the no car life, when I was yet still mulling it over, I had a free Sunday, and so I decided to make the trip then, and see how bearable it was, if it was something I could do twice a month, how long it would take, how sweaty I would get. On that trip, something happened, something that I took as a sign, that really affirmed that this was genius that should be followed to its ultimate ends. On the way to this school, I take a road west, for about fifteen minutes, then I turn south, pass through a neighborhood, go a bit down another street, and I reach the school. At that turn, from going west to south, at around that point, there is an enormous hill. This hill is striking in the same way that Mt. Fuji is striking – this hill is a mini-Fuji, because the land all around it is so flat, and clear. I have always wanted to climb this hill, and I look at it longingly whenever I make the trip. That day, as I came back from biking to the school, I thought, why don’t I climb it now? And climbed it was. I met an old man, who showed me the path to the top, I found a secret lake, I walked along ridges and up and down winding trials, leading me who knew where, but I had no place I particularly needed to be, and could lose myself entirely in the exploration. And when I got back, I thought about this. I had passed by that hill so many times in my car, and had always wanted to climb it, and never did; and I pass by it once on my bike, and it gets climbed. What more needs to be said? I think, for me at least, yet another fault of the car is it restricts spontaneity, rather than increases it. Having a car, you have to find a place to park it. You have to put gas in it and think about the gas in it. You have to get into it and step out of it. You have to turn it off and turn it on. You have to open and close the door. And while they sound like little things, I think all such little things, and especially cumulatively, form a barrier to spontaneity. On the bike, rather, you are encouraged to be spontaneous. You’re in motion, you can park almost anywhere, you can hop and off at a moments notice, nothing has to be turned on or off, you are the gas, you are not bound by streets, or even logic. That logic that keeps you bound to the fastest routes, to the most efficient paths planned out by Google Maps, does not apply on a bike, when you can turn down any road you like, on a whim, because it looks promising, where you can slide through back alleys with ease, change course without hesitation, stop at any moment to get your bearings, and readjust your course, or to go ahead and allow yourself to be lost. So, with Thoreau’s words, to follow my genius, and the climbing of the hill, to encourage me to keep following it, I decided that I would take that step, and go from thinking about giving up the car, to doing so.

I have yet to write about any of those moments where I was glad that I hadn’t biked, except with the climbing of the hill. I haven’t given you any specific examples. I haven’t told you about the impact that I’ve had on others, and I think this is always an interesting thing, when you try things like this, when you make these changes, that you will affect not only your own life, but consequently the lives of the people around you, without you intending to do so at all. I find this happening often as a result of being a pescatarian, and it was happening here, is happening here, too. Lewis, who replied, “Indoor human.” when asked if he was an indoor or outdoor human by my friend Kento sensei, told me two days ago that he biked to get groceries; Emily now wants to buy one, and was asking me this week where I bought my bike and how much it cost. But I want to touch once more on the genius bit, because I think you can see clearly that in this instance, for me it was entirely the right decision to follow it; but how did I know it was genius? I think the true skill does not lie so much in carrying out the genius, because once you begin to carry it out, the events and consequences of it will unfold naturally, as a matter of course. The hard part is discerning what is genius, in the first place, and then choosing to act. I can’t say that I have a real answer for knowing what is genius or what is not, what is a good idea, what is a proper intuition, an inspiration, that should be heeded; but somehow, I knew that this was so. That may just be the magic of genius, that it just comes to us, and if we give it the time, and the consideration, and the conviction, to carry it out, seeing not where it would lead us, and crushing it not in its infancy, giving it fuel, allowing it to light, instead of smothering it out of fear, uncertainty, comfort, laziness, or one of the many other such extinguishers, then it can have the power to take us to new heights, to expand and enrich our lives. All it may take is the simple asking of the question – what is your genius saying to you now? And that may be what gets you on, and if you don’t have an answer, then what will get you on the hunt.

I could say more about my dabbles in public transportation, about the fear in the eyes of the girl sitting behind me on the bus, when I turned around in my seat and started speaking to her, to try and ask her if I had missed my stop or not, and how I had in fact missed my stop, as I discovered as I got off of the bus at the end of the route, at the main transport hub in the city, about how I tried to get on a fancy express train and was politely told to get off, as I didn’t have a ticket, and hadn’t reserved a seat.. but I think I’ve more or less made my point, with one final addition. I mentioned that there were many situations in where I found myself glad that I hadn’t used a car, and none where I wish I had, and here’s one of them. I had been regularly playing soccer with some college students at a college in the city, (Kumamoto city, I realize I keep saying “the city”, and you might be thinking, what city, Steven? What city?) and the school year has ended, and they’ve all graduated. We had our last session, of soccer, sushi, then Fifa (they all wanted to play me, I think I played seven games of Fifa then, nonstop, more tiring than the actual soccer) and then a final going out to dinner. And if I had driven a car, we would have said our final goodbye there. But I hadn’t driven a car – that day, like the last time, I had come into the city by bus (unlike last time, successfully), and for this reason, they gave me a ride home that night. I ended up giving them a tour of my apartment, re-gifting almost all of the alcohol that I had stockpiled through various adventures onto them, talking about our futures, and otherwise having a real, proper, final goodbye. Not that it wouldn’t have been if we had ended things there, in that restaurant parking lot, after the dinner – but it would have been different. It just would have been a different ending, the car ending, and I thought about this too, in the passing days, about how that was yet another situation, that turned out for the better, through not having the car. This, then, would be an example of something that I could not see, when deliberating over whether I should or should not pursue this genius, and I think this is prime example of how, when following your genius, things will happen that you could not have predicted.

Well, I think we’re at the end here. This engine is out of steam! I hope that I’ve convinced you to follow your genius – I will keep following mine. You might be wondering, what will be the end of this car saga? I do still have the car. I think it would be at the dealer’s now if I hadn’t been told that I may be going to Aso to teach again, and if that happens, I then will be forced to own, and use it, out of necessity. But the lessons have been learned, and cannot be unlearned, and even if I go back to a life with a car, it will never be the same.

Update: I’m coming back to this after two days. I wanted the instant gratification, but I thought it’d be better for both of us if I gave it some time to sit and see if any more thoughts popped into my mind afterwards, to be added in. About the car, there isn’t much. I think another interesting point about it is that there was some resistance to this idea, some questioning of it, some “Why would make life harder for yourself?” “What if you regret it?” “Please don’t do it!” and I am glad I ran this idea by my friends because they 1. gave me the idea to do a trial run of the no car life, instead of outright selling it, and 2. they showed me that my idea was solid enough, as I was forced considered the merit of their concerns or arguments related to it, on top of my own, and after that, I still ended up following through. So, even if your genius is met with resistance, and perhaps it always will be, don’t let that stop it!

I want to add one more thing to this post, because in this post I’m trying to share a little insight I feel I’ve had recently, about the following your intuition to good ends, and here I have another small insight, or lesson, that I’ve learned, and don’t know where else I’ll put it, and so here it is. Do you know about the dongle? That little white piece of metal and plastic, that can connect two differing types of ports? My dongle was an AUX to whatever that small charging hole in the iPhone 6 or 7 is called. It’s about an inch long. Well, everyone knows that dongle is a piece of garbage. Such a thing really has no right to exist, but exist it does. It is an incredibly inferior product, by design, being so bendable, and thus vulnerable – but I think it is also probably just made with the lowest possible quality ingredients imaginable, so that it will break as soon as possible, and you will be forced to either waste your money on a new one, or finally out of frustration upgrade your headphones to ones that are not AUX, and match the new port. Until they switch the port on you again, and then you have to get yet another pair of headphones. Soon the port may be a thing of the past, with wireless charging and headphones, so that might not be a concern.. but that doesn’t matter to me at the moment, because I have a pair of headphones, I’ve had a pair of headphones for about 6 years now, and they are an incredible pair of headphones, and I don’t want to stop using them, and so I buy dongles, to connect them to my phone, and after buying the third dongle, I will never buy another dongle again. But the lesson is that, I should never have bought the second dongle, let alone the third, because I knew that they would break, and the problem would never really be solved this way. I complained about the weakness of dongles, as I searched for my third, a few weeks ago, about how stupid it all was, but yet I wanted it now, because I wanted to have my music, and I didn’t want to do the work to find any other way to solve this problem. After my second or third run with my new dongle, after making it about a hundred steps from my apartment, my headphones were filled with a hellish, grating, metallic screaming, the sounds a robot might make in its death throes, and I knew that it was done, and the fact that I was an idiot, confirmed. Putting band-aids over a deep wound will not help it close – at some point, you need stitches. Every time I bought a new dongle, I was just buying a band-aid, and not stitches. This was a poor temporary solution to a problem – it was never a permanent fix. And why bother with temporary solutions, if they will only cost you more time and energy in the long run? If you have a problem, and you have to choose between temporary and permanent solution, unless for the time being you have to choose the temporary, to get to the permanent, then never choose the temporary. That is the lesson I learned from this dongle business, and I’m thinking I might just tape it to my wall, next to my notice that I had gotten a package, that was being held for me by a local shipping company, that I procrastinated on, until one day I finally made the call, and was told, “Huh? That was a month ago. We sent that back.” I will always wonder what was in that package. That slip is a reminder to me, not to procrastinate, and especially not on the receiving of packages, and my dongle will be another reminder.

And now, we are officially finished! Will you ditch your car? Will you follow your genius? I don’t think I mentioned it, but the train line, that goes all the way from the west to the east end of Kyushu, is about a ten minute walk from my apartment, and the bus stop that goes into the city is about a two minute walk. That, with the bike, and having friends, made it significantly less daunting to go completely no car. But, even if you couldn’t go all in, any time you could trade your car in for the bike, or the walk, give it a try, and you might find that you benefit as much as I did.

So.. As they say in the Looney Toons, “That’s all folks!”

じゃあーまた！