I set a goal to get into the business school I wanted.
I set a goal to live in the US.
I set a goal to marry an ideal person I selected.
I set a goal to start my business.
And…. I got burned out.
Each time I achieved my goal, there was this emptiness in me. Instead of feeling good about achieving my goal, I found a big empty hole in me.
I scrambled to find a new goal to fill that hole. For a while I was fine. But once I achieved my new goal, I felt this emptiness again.
How many more times do I have to feel this emptiness? What’s the value of repeating this achieving a goal and feeling empty business?
So I quit. No more setting a goal for me. That was when I sold the company I founded.
Now what? No goals? Can you live without setting a goal?
It’s been 14 years. Granted, that I’m not quite living aimlessly. But you can say that I’m experimenting my life quite differently than I use to. This “not setting a goal” approach is one of my experiments. And so far I’m doing fine. I’m enjoying it!
How fine am I doing? After I quit setting a goal?
I no longer feel that emptiness.
I feel happy every day. Definitely, I’m happier than 14 years ago.
My understanding about goals has changed.
I have different priorities in my life.
How I see time is different, too.
I surely don’t miss goals.
I’m more convinced that, against all the “common sense” to praise the virtue of goal setting, that there is an alternative way to live: A life free from goal setting.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the whole world. According to WHO, over 6.5 million people died. Everybody’s lives have been disrupted. The news in every media is full of tragedy.
Here I dare focus on the silver lining. How many can I find in my life?
The second Spring Equinox Day was approaching since the outbreak of COVID-19. The expectation that the pandemic would be over by start of the new year was waning. The chocolate shop where I used to teach Ikebana was still shut down. How much longer would it last?
It must have been one of the email marketing messages. Akimbo was offering a new workshop, called Writing in Community. The tagline was “publish a book in 6 months.”
I had stopped posting my blog for a while because there was nothing to update about. Tea ceremony events I used to host had to be put on hold because of the pandemic. I had no intention to write a book, but I thought it a good opportunity to brush up my English writing skill. What have I got to lose?
I signed up for the workshop and started following the instruction.
I was Cohort # (I already forgot!). There were about 15 people in my cohort. Whenever I wrote something new, I was advised to let my cohort know. A couple of people read my updates and left me some feedback.
I wrote about what Ikebana is. The next day I got questions like “how do you do that? Show me your photos.” I kept on writing how I put together my arrangement step by step with photos attached. Then I wrote about tea ceremony. My cohort would ask, “how do you feel when make tea?” So I would respond by exploring my mental stage while I make a bowl of tea.
Cohort’s comments and questions led me from one chapter to another, and from touching surface to digging deeper.
Eight to nine o’clock every morning became my holy time to sit down and write. By the time when the workshop was over 6 months later, I accumulated about 6 or 7 chapters. About Ikebana, tea ceremony, kimono, Urushi (Japanese lacquer), etc.
A couple of months later I took my writing to one of the local publishers. He showed an interest in co-publishing my book. Really?
Well, I have no idea when my book will be published. To be honest, it doesn’t matter much anymore. My writing must have been horrible anyway. And my desire to write has been somewhat ignited. That was enough.
Then I rediscovered this Medium platform and started posting my article.
About Day 10 in my 30-Day Writing Challenge, I received an email from my old boss, out of blue. He told me that he is enjoying reading my article. What a nice surprise!
The sense that someone I respect deeply is reading my article, has pushed my back. It’s worth continuing. I don’t know where this will lead me. But for now, let me continue this new venture.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the whole world. According to WHO, over 6.5 million people died. Everybody’s lives have been disrupted. The news in every media is full of tragedy.
Here I dare focus on the silver lining. How many can I find in my life?
…
The fear of death is normal. That’s why people all of the world have endured so much inconvenience during the lockdown, to save as many lives as possible from this horrible virus.
I’m no exception.
But really? Has anybody ever been able to avoid death? Alexander the Great didn’t. Genghis Khan didn’t. The same with all the emperors in Roman Empire, the kings of British empire, India’s Maharajas …
Death is unavoidable. It shall come to anybody. You just don’t want it to come too early. Then when is not too soon?
The book gave me an opportunity to take a look at this phenomenon differently. Death marks the end of my life. Until I die, I live. How should I face this reality that my life is limited?
In my journal I started to add one line to state the number of days I left until my 100th birthday. I arbitrarily set that is the day I die. If I live longer than that day, it will be a bonus. If I die before that day, so be it.
More important for me is that I remind myself every morning that when I wake up today, I have one day shorter to live than yesterday.
I named the Excel sheet I created to calculate this number as “My Life Is Ticking Away Table.”
As of today (November 12, 2022), the table says:
14,295 days remaining till my 100th birthday (the day I die)
2,042 weeks
469 months
39 years
How many more weekly brunches can I enjoy? How many more monthly Ikebana classes can I conduct? How many more annual trips to Europe can I enjoy? This tables answers those questions.
Everything I do in the future has finite number. Nothing is infinite for me. I’m well reminded of this unavoidable reality of life.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the whole world. According to WHO, over 6.5 million people died. Everybody’s lives have been disrupted. The news in every media is full of tragedy.
Here I dare focus on the silver lining. How many can I find in my life?
I dumped the stocks at the bottom!
On the morning of March 23, 2020, we sold all our stock holdings and cashed out. At that time, we thought we made the right decision. In retrospect, how stupid that was! S&P 500 marked its bottom on that day, and since then until the end of 2021, the market showed a rapid recovery and an amazing run.
When we cashed out, how did I feel? My journal says, “I’m surprised to find out that this is the same feeling as I cleaned up my in-laws’ house after my father-in-law passed away.” Coincidentally March 23 was the third anniversary of my father-in-law’s passing. I felt calm, a sense of letting go.
To fulfil my intellectual curiosity
A couples of weeks later, the stock market was showing a quick turnaround. I started to study about option trading to “fulfil my intellectual curiosity.”
In May and June of 2020, I spent at least 2-3 hours to study about option trading. What call and put mean, what delta, theta, and other Greek alphabets mean. Why there is an expiration date. What are different strategies of option trading…
Here I have no intention nor any qualification of describing what option trading is. The only thing I can tell is that it was quite exciting to learn something totally new.
My teachers were all YouTubers, at least 30 years younger than my age. It surely was a humble experience to regard those young faces as my teachers.
Whether on Charles Schwab or TD Ameritrade, to start trading options, you need approvals from the firms. There are 4 different approval levels, from Level 0 to Level 3. The higher the level, the higher risk strategies you can trade. You call up the firm, they ask you several questions, and only after you are able to answer them correctly you get approvals.
It was humiliating to get rejected on the phone, but it was my fault. My understanding was not thorough enough. I studied more and tried again. I felt good when I finally got approval for Level 3.
Come July I started trading with defined risk strategies like Iron Condor and Put Spread. In early 2021 I began undefined risk strategies like Strangles. And all through this year I’ve been trading Strangles.
Trading like running a business
What I have learned through trading options in the last couple of years is that it’s possible to treat trading like any other business. The key is consistency.
You have to spend at least some time to watch the market.
You have stay in the market.
You do your best to minimize your risk, but there is no way of avoiding risks 100%.
You set a boundary of the maximum loss you are ready to take.
You don’t get excited about short-term win, but set a long-term goal, like annual rate of return.
As a result, my return of investment was par as S&P 500 in 2021. And in 2022, my return is positive whereas S&P 500 is almost 20% down. Not bad!
It was an eye-opener to learn that option trading can give me more stable return than even passive investment.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the whole world. According to WHO, over 6.5 million people died. Everybody’s lives have been disrupted. The news in every media is full of tragedy.
Here I dare focus on the silver lining. How many can I find in my life?
In my previous post, I mentioned how the pandemic has pushed me to teach Ikebana online. And I mentioned that my students are now spread all over the world.
Today’s story explains how that happened, and how the pandemic has pushed me one step further.
It started with one message
July 2020. I had held my online ikebana class for two months. Now I was getting used to talking to students on the screen. My eyes were adapting to imagine how their flower arrangements look like in three dimensions while looking at the two-dimensional photos.
So far my online classes were limited only to my existing students.
One day I received an inquiry from a person who says, “I’m new to Ikebana, but can I register for your class?”
I apologized to that person that my online classes were only for my existing students, not for new students. In my response to that person, I casually asked, “where are you emailing me from?”
“Minnesota” was the answer!
I started contemplating the idea of teaching Ikebana online to somebody who is totally new to Ikebana and lives miles and miles away. How can I satisfy their needs?
If I create a video of the very first lesson of Sogetsu Ikebana and post it on the net, then whoever watched it might get the idea of what Ikebana is and what to expect at my online Ikebana class…
I started shooting a video with my iphone.
My first YouTube video
It was not easy.
The first one I tried looked so messy that I scratched all. I couldn’t even finish a short sentence without stuttering. I felt humiliated but had to realize that I suck at improvisation. I wrote a script, with every single sentence written down precisely. I memorized them all, then I started filming.
Editing was just as hard. It took much longer than I first expected to learn how to use iMovie.
After posting my first video, I created several more Ikebana tutorial videos, focusing on the very basic elements of Ikebana techniques.
When I added online classes for beginners, I made it prerequisite to watch my tutorial videos for registering for the class. When teaching in person, I used to demonstrate each time a new student joined my class. Now that I created this tutorial video, I can skip that process. The struggle of making the first video paid off handsomely!
My YouTube channel keeps growing
Since my primary objective of creating tutorial videos was to help beginners jump start with their learning Ikebana, I stopped adding any more video after several of them. If you want to keep on learning Ikebana, please sign up for my online class – is my current position.
After over two years since I stopped uploading any more videos, my YouTube channel still keeps growing. As of today, there are 6,747 subscribers.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the whole world. According to WHO, over 6.5 million people died. Everybody’s lives have been disrupted. The news in every media is full of tragedy.
Here I dare focus on the silver lining. How many can I find in my life?
…
It was such an honor that I got to teach Ikebana at Fran’s Chocolates, one of the best chocolatiers in the US (I believe so, so does Barack Obama!).
Fran’s Chocolates just opened a café in their main building, which used to be a famous brewery in Georgetown neighborhood in Seattle. Fran’s chocolates turned its vast space with the high ceiling int to a beautiful, cozy space where people can hang out over their chocolates and drinks.
The café has a huge table that can easily seat twelve people. And that table became where my Ikebana students use to make flower arrangement during my class twice a month.
My students get to learn Ikebana while enjoying their favorite drinks (my favorite is Fran’s Matcha Latte!). At the end of the class, the students get to take home a small box of Fran’s Chocolates together with the flowers they used for the class. Flowers and chocolates… What a heavenly combination!
My Ikebana classes become quite popular. They often filled up way in advance.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit
As with all the retailers in town, Fran’s coffee shop had to shut down. How long will be the lockdown? When can we resume our class?
The first couple of months of lock down, I made myself busy cleaning up every single corner in the house. But there was so much you could clean. Our house is not a mansion.
The spring flowers were blossoming in the neighborhood. Just because we can’t get together physically, that doesn’t make a good excuse for not enjoying Ikebana. Now everybody is rushing to online meetings to get connected. Why not teaching Ikebana online?
In May 2020, I invited a small group of my longtime Ikebana students to be my Gunnie pigs. I asked them to download Microsoft Teams onto their desktop and wait for an meeting invite from me.
I scrambled to get whatever necessary. My old iPhone became the second webcam. I researched which wireless microphone is suitable for me. Oh, my room is kind of dark. I should get some lighting gears!
Setting my online Ikebana class Photo by author
The day of the trial class came. All the 12 people who agreed to participate could join. Can they see me? My desk? Can they hear my voice? So far so good.
At Fran’s I used to purchase all the flowers, three kinds of flowers for twelve students, so that my students didn’t have to bring anything. For the online class, they had to prepare everything themselves. Flowers and branches, a container, scissors, etc. Everyone put good thoughts into which materials to use. I was impressed to see the wide variety.
I gave everybody 30 minutes to create their own arrangement. I muted myself, but watched carefully how each student was enjoying (or struggling).
The time was up. At first I asked the students to show their work with their camera. But the resolution of the image was poor. What should we do? I asked them to take a photo of their work and send it to me via email or text.
I copied the photos on to my computer and shared them one by one on my screen. I would give some suggestion to each work. The students would see together everybody else’s work and hear my suggestion. After I go through all the work, the students would go back changing their arrangement based on my suggestion.
The students would send me another photo of their work.
Now I can show two photos side by side, “before” and “after” of the same arrangement. Well, that would have been impossible to do if I were teaching in person!
Fast forward, more than two years later, my online class is going strong. Several of my local students are still continuing to take my lessons. Some of them are so close to obtaining teacher’s certificate. Congratulations!
My student base has expanded. Now many are taking my classes from out of state. States like I have never visited before (Oklahoma, Main, Wisconsin, Arizona). I even have students in Europe! (Germany and Czech Republic)
Who’d have thought I could teach ikebana online? And teach worldwide?
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the whole world. According to WHO, over 6.5 million people died. Everybody’s lives have been disrupted. The news in every media is full of tragedy.
Here I dare focus on the silver lining. How many can I find in my life?
…
I love my mother, but ever since I moved out for college, I seldom called home.
Especially, since I moved to the US, communication between us became sporadic. In those days international calls were expensive, and I was too lazy to write a letter. Only after Internet phones became prevalent, I started calling her a little more often. Skype was great!
When I went back to Japan four or five years ago, I bought her an iPad as present. I taught her how to use Line, a popular app among Japanese people.
She doesn’t quite know what a browser is, but at least she learned that by clicking a link I send, she can access YouTube videos. I would occasionally send her a link to a video of old Japanese singers. (Misora Hibari and Murata Hideo are her favorites.) Or it would be Bunraku puppet theater plays.
She would text me how much she enjoyed watching those videos. Our communication via Line, however, was not more than once or twice a week.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“Your mother is 82 years old, and she is living alone. How can you not get in touch with her at least once a day? What if she falls or stops beathing? Who would know if she is alive or not?”
A friend of mine who is in the similar situation scolded me for my lack of consideration. She is absolutely right.
It has become our daily ritual. My mother sends me a text message every morning. (she is live today!) I call her to start a video chat. For some reason she can never pick up my video chat. My call is canceled. But right after that she calls me, and a video chat starts.
Our conversation is nothing special. “What did you eat for lunch today?” Or “where did you go for a walk?” Sometimes she takes her iPad when she goes out to lunch with my cousin’s family who live nearby. I get to talk to all of them.
I get to see my mother’s face and hearing her voice every day, although we live thousands of miles apart. Technology was already out there, but I never took fully advantage of it before.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the whole world. According to WHO, over 6.5 million people died. Everybody’s lives have been disrupted. The news in every media is full of tragedy.
Here I dare focus on the silver lining. How many can I find in my life?
…
I used to pluck every single weed that was sprouting in my back yard. With no more than 13 feet by 15 feet, my back yard is so tiny that I never thought it much of a burden.
My plants were lined up neatly on the ground. The dark brown soil was exposed, with no untidy greenish weeds shown. I used to feel a little sense of accomplishment each time I completed weeding.
What did I do with the weeds I plucked? I dumped them all into the yard waste bin. Every Monday the city truck would come, collect the yard waste, and carry it to a compost location somewhere.
My plants need nutrition. I was advised to add compost to the soil every year. So I used to purchase a couple of bags of compost from the nearby nursery and spread it on the ground.
Then Pandemic hit.
I was too afraid to go to the nursery. What should I do? As so many people would have done, I browsed videos on YouTube to learn how to take care of my plants. There I ran into a Japanese YouTuber who was practicing natural farming.
His advice was not to pluck weeds! Cut off the top tip of the weeds, but leave the root untouched. Don’t take away the discarded part, but simply spread it on the ground. That will become good nutrition.
I thought that’s brilliant! Why do I have to throw weeds away as yard waste, fill up the yard waste bin, have the city truck collect them, carry them to a compost location far away, have an commercial entity make compost out of them, and buy the compost from them? Instead, I can simply return the discarded weeds back on the ground on my yard.
The video suggested that I should not expose the soil to the strong summer sun. The UV light would kill microorganisms living in the soil. Make sure to cover the ground with fallen leaves and weeds. Those microorganisms are vital to turning weeds and fallen leaves back to nutrition of soil.
Instead of going for shopping, I spent time cutting (not plucking) weeds and spreading the cuttings onto the ground. The spring rain helped weeds grow faster, and again I would cut weeds and spread on the ground.
I used to water the flowers twice a day during the summer. Not in the last three years. I watered only twice a week, or three times when it got very hot. My plants didn’t die. The soil covered with weeds and fallen leaves seemed to be holding water much better.
What was I doing all through the years? By plucking all the weeds, I must have been damaging the soil all along, whereas I could have fully recycled in my back yard.
I learned the real power of sustainability and the wisdom of nature.
The clock was set back by one hour. I had an extra hour to sleep in this morning, but it didn’t help. My throat hurts and I’m shivering. I decided to stay in bed the rest of the day today.
On Friday I taught Ikebana to 15 employees at an IT company. Yesterday I was a narrator for the tea ceremony demonstrations all day. I might have overworked my throat two days in a row. Or I was surrounded by so many people indoors and some of them was spreading powerful germs.
My husband had gone to gym in the morning. On his way home he called me and urged me to take a CORID-19 home test. I dragged myself downstairs followed the procedure. Fifteen minutes later the result showed negative. One less worry, at least.
After brunch (I had a healthy appetite!), I brought my iPad in bed and start scrolling the Medium website. What else can you do other than reading when sick in bed?
I went through the people’s names that I follow and started reading their articles randomly.
Wait! I started writing on Medium every day 33 days ago. I looked at my profile page, and found that now I have 105 followers. I’m eligible to apply for the program!
In his video, Ayodej emphasizes that you have to keep on writing. At least 3 articles a week. He also says you have to be strategic about titles, visuals, and formatting of the article. Can I keep on doing what I was doing and further commit to get better?
Why not! What is there to lose? My main reason that I started writing every day is so that I can improve my written English. After having lived in the US for over 28 years, I have got tired of making an excuse for my poor English just because it’s not my native tongue.
By writing and reading every day, I might be able to finally use “a” and “the” correctly.
I can earn some money, how little it may be, by trying to improve my writing. How cool is that!
I’m convinced. I will apply for Medium Partner Program now.
…
Is it “a healthy appetite?” “healthy appetite” with no “a”? Or “the healthy appetite?” I would appreciate for your suggestion.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the whole world. According to WHO, over 6.5 million people died. Everybody’s lives have been disrupted. The news in every media is full of tragedy.
Here I dare focus on the silver lining. How many can I find in my life?
…
Among the 90 some members, probably I’m the second youngest.
In the last eight years or so I have been in charge of putting together and sending out newsletters to members six times a year. I have to send it via physical mail to at least 10 of our members, because they don’t have email address.
Members enjoy social gatherings under the theme of Ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement) once a month. Thirty or so core members are involved in some kind of committees, and they have another meeting a month to discuss business.
Ever since the group was founded over 60 years ago, for the members, meetings meant gathering at a church or a community center, bringing cookies and cakes and serving tea during the discussion. Many have been loyal members for over 30 years, and now they love to show off photos of their grandchildren.
Then COVID hit.
All the meetings scheduled in 2020 were canceled. The May newsletter that year only had photos of Ikebana arrangements created by some members. That was the only thing we could feature.
The summer was over. Time to get back together, but how?
Several members came up with the idea of meeting online. They seemed to have learned how to use Zoom from their grandchildren. Even those who don’t have email address have a smart phone. Why not give it a try? So we did.
The first online meeting was far from smooth. The person who had the Zoom account didn’t know how grant another person access to be a host. Some needed help how to log on. Some joined unknowingly with two devices, causing terrible howling.
But as time went by everyone became better at the operation.
After over two years, we finally decided to get together in person again. Masks are required among us. Considering the average age of the members, that seems prudent.
“We should keep our business meetings online!” was the consensus when we discussed how to conduct our future meetings. “We don’t have to drive, we don’t have to get dressed fancy. Without stepping out the house at all, we can see old familiar faces.”
Grandmas became quite comfortable using the new technology!
