Easy Peasy Japanesey

Back in July, I’d signed up for a Japanese class. Mainly because I was bored and suffering from cabin fever; it provided a great opportunity to get out of the house and gain a new skill.
A month-long intensive course for a small group, we were taught the hiragana syllabary and basic grammar/ vocabulary. Even though it makes my usual problems (performance anxiety, social phobias) rear their heads again, I’m enjoying the learning process so much that I went back for round 2 earlier this month.

I’ve had a fascination with Japan since primary school, and as an added benefit you gain fresh perspectives from learning a new language, especially when it doesn’t belong to the same language family as your mother tongue. Different languages come with radically different views of the world around them, which I find very exciting to discover.
The first time I strayed out of the Indo-European branch was 20 years ago, when I started learning Biblical Hebrew at school. Shame that I haven’t had a chance to use it after I got my high school certificate, because even though I can still read it, I forgot 90% of the grammar and vocabulary.

Also, I like the challenge. I spent so many years at uni with the sword of doom dangling over my head that I forgot what it is like to pursue a skill just for the sake of it. As mentioned before, I am not completely anxiety-free in class, but there’s no big test in the end or target I have to meet: just attending and learning is the goal. And nothing or nobody forces me to go there, so I have the freedom to quit whenever I want to. Which is not anytime soon.

Learning Japanese is difficult. Not sure how much of that is the inherent nature of the language (from an Indo-European perspective, at least) and how much of it is my rusty brain creaking into gear… I usually grasp the concepts explained to us immediately, but the reading/writing and numerical systems are very complex, and it is intimidating to start off from a place of complete illiteracy. We stammered our way through the textbook like first graders, even though now, after eight weeks’ worth of lessons, the prospect of reading the lines out loud is not as daunting anymore. I did practice between sessions, though, because it’s a lot to take in at once. Come to think of it, I wonder how long it will be until it doesn’t hit me like a wall of cryptic text anymore – even if I know all the words, nothing jumps out at first glance.

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Arranging Appointments Around An Antidepressant

The good news of the day: after my therapist’s statement arrived in the mail, I was able to start the application process for welfare today and it got dated back to March 1st, meaning that once the application gets approved, I’ll get the full sum for this month already.
The bad news of the day: it’s a damn complicated process. As a university student, I am not covered by welfare – except when the student is not able to work at least 18 hours per week, which I’m currently not. But to earn the “impaired ability to work” label, I first have to meet the job agency’s doctor; until then, I count as a non-impaired person seeking state support – and as such, I cannot apply for the kind of welfare I would qualify for, because I am a student. Are you still following me? So the idea the people at the job centre came up with was that my husband needs to start the process, and put my name on the list of other people in the household who’d belong to the “community in need” (a rough approximation of the German construct “Bedarfsgemeinschaft”) instead of the other way around, and once I saw their doctor, we would switch the application over to me as the main applicant… We have another appointment on Thursday morning, which will hopefully bring more clarity about the proceedings.

Which brings me to the next problem: the new appointment is at 9 AM. Right now, I’m toying with the idea of taking the venlafaxine afterwards, because the withdrawals in the morning are generally less severe than the side-effects after taking the pill. That also means that I am going to stay on the current dose until then, because I am sure increasing it will also increase the side-effects again for a while.
Generally I am doing better; the nausea / sickness is finally gone and my appetite usually returns around 4 PM, which allows me to have a normal dinner. The only persistent symptom I currently have is vertigo or dizziness, so that I still have to lie down again after breakfast, but it feels very normal, no paraesthesias or “funny feelings”.
I am not sure if I have any positive effects from the venlafaxine yet. My husband claims I handled our financial crisis last week much better than he expected and credits the antidepressant for it. It might very well be the case; I have not had any severe anxiety recently, but on the other hand I have been so consumed with just managing every single day that there was literally no time for me to worry about anything else.