lisawilliamson

10 days until Japan.

Holy shit. lol
Today I scheduled an appointment for my car to be looked at at the autobody shop on Monday, I'm leaving it there on Sunday afternoon.
I posted both of my guitars on Kijiji, but since there's lots of competition (like seriously epic tons), we'll see how that goes. :P

My party is tomorrow. I changed it from going to the club to going for karaoke. I tried to make my going away party with friends something that everyone would want to come to, but instead it ended up being all weird and messed up, so I just changed it to something that I wanted to do, the end. LOL

I ordered my foreign currency yesterday, ¥180,000 worth. When I think about everything that has to be spent on in the next month, it sure doesn't seem like a lot. :C I hope my guitars and my car sell quickly.

My last week of work is almost here. I just have today and then five more days, and I'm gone. That part is exciting. :3 I'm also super worried about getting around while I'm in Japan, but I'll do my best. :P

I didn't realize how scary it was before that this was the first time I'm doing this all alone, which sounds stupid, but it's true. At least before I always had one other English-speaking person to depend on the whole way. Now it's just me, myself, and I. And I won't even have the Internet to help me out, either. Dang.

38 days until Japan.

Today, since it is gross and blizzard-y outside, I am really going to focus on selling my dolls, doing my book review, and organizing/taking stuff off of/resetting my old computer so that Jose can have it. He's buying it from me on payday, this coming Friday, so I do have a couple of days. It's mostly a giveaway, the stuff on it as far as applications go, the additional Mac keyboard, etc... it's worth over 1k but since it has problems I'm giving it to him for $150. I have to just start getting rid of things, things I simply can't take with me, things that have needed to go for a long time anyway.

When I look around and see how much stuff I still have to list and manage though, I get anxious and overwhelmed and feel like just giving up. The problem is though, I don't have an option. Anything I don't list goes in the garbage. My parents have never had a policy of letting me store anything, so this will be the third time in my life I have to get rid of everything I own or just toss it. /bitter lol

The goal is for me to bring two checked bags/suitcases, and my backpack. (Then ship myself my box of shoes later.) If you think about it, for that being everything I own, that is not a lot of stuff. Not a lot of clothing, or beauty stuff, or anything. Some girls take that much stuff on a week vacation; that's going to comprise everything in my life. Additionally I still have to get a Japanese adapter, or even two, for some of my stuff until I can find Japanese replacements (i.e. my straightener).

Soon I'll have to handle my phone stuff, too. Cancel/pay out my contract, which costs a bunch of money I don't have. Buy a new phone in Japan. Sooo much money for everything.

Still have to sell my car. I don't even think it will start right now, so can't do anything about that at the moment. It needs to have a couple last things fixed up and go for a wash. More money money money. I don't think I'd be anywhere near as stressed about these things if I weren't grasping at straws for funds here. The fact that I "can't work" properly while in Japan on a student visa is hugely an issue that frightens and stresses me every single moment of every single day. While I do very wholly welcome the prospect of not having to balance time between working a crap job and studying -- which gives me a whole lot of time for concentrating on getting good grades and excelling at reading and writing Japanese, which I am happy for -- I am extremely stressed about monthly payments of things and having enough to get by and enjoy myself on occasion. e_e;

I know there's the student line of credit thing, but that whole prospect terrifies me. Debt terrifies me. I JUST managed to get out of 3k of debt after TWO YEARS. And I never would have, either, if it were not for some lucky breaks with things like getting to live in a place where I don't have as many bills to pay. How in the bloody fuck am I going to manage 40k?

For people who are going to become doctors or business entrepreneurs, putting yourself in that kind of situation seems logical. You'll pay it back, in a few years' time. But for me? It just seems like... I already have no confidence that I will ever, ever be able to afford my own place of residence, unless it was like a 100-square-foot box in the middle of nowhere. How in the bloody hell am I ever supposed to pay back 40k in loans? Every single day the prospect absolutely terrifies me, it almost makes me cry. I can't imagine ever not living paycheck to paycheck. I can't imagine ever having a career that I like that makes me a "lot" of money, and by a lot I mean 4-5k a month. I'm already old. I'm 25 and just starting my solid university career, which I feel I will finally finish, a field of study I feel I finally belong. I won't graduate until I'm almost 30. By that time I will have lost eight years of career-building time that most post-grads have, and have nothing to show for it.

The long story short is... yeah, I can take out this student line of credit, sure. But I absolutely don't want to have to use it often. I hope in my whole four years at school I can use less than 1/4 of what's allowed. I might be able to manage that okay, maybe.

I swear to god in my life I've never been so scared or stressed about money. Bah.

43 days until Japan.

Hooray! After I emailed about what was going on with the next step in my process for studying abroad, the school informed me that they received my Certificate of Eligibility from the Japanese Ministry of Justice last week and sent it by Priority EMS on Friday. Sumioka-san said I should receive it by the end of this week or early next week (and apologized for the delay lol). Yay progress!

That honestly makes me feel a lot better about the state of things. Today, my focus is going to be on finishing reading my book and hopefully finishing the short review I have to do on it. Once that's done, I'll have everything completed for the next series of submissions that I can have done before that next package arrives.

I work at 6:30 or 7 am all week this week. That's some early (4:30-5 am) starts for me! Luckily that also means I have time after work to get things accomplished before I have to sleep and do it all over lol. I think what I am going to/should do is take one thing per day and get it done. One thing I think I should prioritize is getting my other doll up for sale, also. Those may take some time, and I am running out quickly, so I should focus on making sure those get sold asap.

Well, time to go out in the freezing -31C weather and walk to the train station! Wish me luck! lol