By S. E. Hinton

I'm sitting at home waiting for a new couch and chair to arrive. I finally gave in and conceded that my Japanese furniture is uncomfortable. Crazy - it was perfect for almost four years in Japan, but it's suddenly irritatingly low to the ground here. I'm terrible at picking things out and matching colors or with anything remotely related to decorating. Decorating to me means having stacks and stacks of delicious books everywhere and maybe a picture of Anderson Cooper on the fridge. Add to that that I hate spending money on large items, and who knows what I'm going to end up with today. I picked the furniture out a few weeks ago (pre-cat), but now realize that the fabric is perfect to attract animal hair, and it will probably be covered with white fur within minutes. (The items are "espresso." I think that means brown.) Next I need to find an inexpensive dining room table because, as you could guess, this is what mine looks like (but basically a round kotatsu without the futon.) Crap.

I'm struggling right now. I can't write about my job, so I'll write about something that happened at my last job. When I had been in Japan for about a month, an employee from one of my branches came to talk with me. She said the group had a meeting without me and they decided that they didn't like my style, and they wished I would go back to wherever it was that I had come from. Long story short, I got rid of the girl a month or so later, and the rest of us lived happily ever after. But it was really hurtful and made for a pretty bad week.

So anyway, something similar happened here this week. It was slightly less cruel, but it's so rough. I don't know, being the "boss" kind of sucks sometimes because people don't think that you're a real person. There's a different set of rules, I guess. I'm trying very hard, but the culture at my office and the culture in this city in general is so strange for me. People seem to be very suspicious of and not open to "outsiders" here. In three months I haven't gone more than I couple days without someone mentioning something along the lines of - you're different/you're not from around here/why are you here? Things aren't coming together all that smoothly, and I don't love it here. Poop.

But. When I moved back to the States I knew it would be a transition, and so I refuse to be surprised that it is. I don't think that means that NY is the wrong choice, or that it won't evenually come together more or feel more like home someday. But it means that I've had a rough week or so, and I hope things start to feel better soon.