Wow, and that was an entire year

Wow, time really does feel slow when you don’t have anything else going on in your life due to the pandemic. It was easy to waste time and find excuses to waste time, just because you cannot get into your usual routine. It gets harder and harder to fight it off as well.

I have never taken this much of a break from budo/exercise. Like I’ve said before, the pandemic and this forced break makes me live in the “idea” of naginata, rather than DOING naginata. I miss going outside to my cafes and being able run around in my athleisure attire while doing so.

I wasn’t able to do alot of my new year’s resolutions from last year, so a lot of those 2020 resolutions have now been passed on to the 2021 year. The 2020 year though, admittedly, made me start to explore new projects that I’m definitely going to include in my 2021 goals. Maybe next year I’ll live that “Instagrammy influencer lifestyle” and have it documented more like the old days.

I don’t think it’s healthy for majority of people to rely on 2021 to just magically be 1000% better. I honestly don’t see things getting better overnight, I think it’ll take a little while.

I’m also going to just organize more and sell plants and clothes that I’m a bit tired of and just grew out of.

The biggest resolution I have for next year is to reclaim my old fearless self that was taken away from me due to abuse and betrayal. I know I”m still there and I learned and grew from my traumatic experiences, but I definitely am looking forward for the clock to strike midnight so that I can just be on top of alot of my life again.

See you soon 2021! Life is still too short!

COVID Budgeting

Budgeting has been very different during COVID due to decreases and increases in my income in different ways. Not getting paid in the summer really also screws you over when it comes to savings and such as well. Bleh. I think I’m going to scrap the Finance Planner for this year and just start fresh in January, since my plant investments have already been splurged and messed up some of my monthly planning. Eh, oh well, I guess it’s not such a bad thing in the long-term if you do spontaneous investments—one bad thing about ‘having a routine’ or just doing a monthly budget is that you can fall victim to complacency and never make potential beneficial spontaneous changes.

In other news, I’m starting to conclude that Winter/Fall plant repotting is not a great time to do it because the plants need a lot of sunlight to adjust, and the reduction of sunlight going into the colder months makes the plant more delayed in acclimation and also increases the chances of yellowing leaves during the initial process. Last year, I didn’t repot any of my plants and just had them sit through the winter, and I think that the slow yet steady growth was beneficial for them in the long run (e.g. look at my PPP). I think I’m going to not touch my Strawberry Shake afterall because the growth has been slow due to the cold weather + winter. My White Princess has also not shown any more yellowing leaves, so I think it ended up adjusting ok and started to (finally) shoot out some new roots. My Variegated Adansonii has been having an accelerated amount of yellowing leaves I think due to the cold weather, lack of sunlight, and just having a bigger plant overall to need to support. I’m starting to wonder if the Variegated Adansonii needs to constantly be bonsai’d as a way to keep the specimen surviving. I am also thinking about experimenting with it by giving it flowering fertilizer to see if it’ll produce some inflorescence (I don’t think anyone has ever seen a Variegated Adansonii Inflorescence before because it’s a relatively new plant).

Having a desk has also been helpful in being able to do some daily things that is needed…I have been able to keep up with a lot of the naginata 仕事 and just the brainless email response stuff as well.

Wow, a year has literally felt like a waste

At least for me, if you’re not busy with something that keeps you going forward in your life (in my case, naginata), everything just feels like a bag of potato chips containing empty calories. You want to train, but cannot. You have all these home improvement projects that you had in mind during this corona time, but then never get to because of just lack of funds due to the shitty economy, or just that not having your mental state being the same due to the lack of consistent training makes you not push yourself as much as you usually would. I did, however, get some mega back burner projects done (which I feel great about), however, my “2020 Goals” page in my planner is pathetically not bubbled as much as I intended it to be for this year.

Not as many tutoring appointments as before, no coaching $ like in the previous years, so I definitely had to budget things a little bit differently this year, however, I did get into the world of investing and what it means to take huge risks in a large chunk of money at once, when to wait, when to buy, and calculating profit out of things. I decided to nest my egg of future cash investments, while not going so crazy on stocks and whatnot. I also took advantage of some of the deals on quality items due to the economy, since I would normally not buy them under normal (budget) circumstances. The money I would’ve normally used for yearly plane tickets to Japan has now been used on investments instead. I really hope that they pay off in the Spring and that the plant industry does not experience a Dutch Tulip Bulb Crash like 1637.

The city has been much quieter now since the pandemic. It’s honestly too bad that I wasn’t still doing my thesis during these quiet times at home xD I could’ve saved a lot of post-commute stress had the pandemic hit during my studies, oh well. Now that I’ve been working on my publication and working with real people, I guess that is making me try to procrastinate in other ways (a.k.a. actually writing on this blog lol).

Right now, Himawari has been teaching a dance unit during class, so I’ve been waking up less stressed out about things. It’s just that I have been feeling lazier and lazier—now I honestly feel as though there is nothing to watch on Youtube now (yeah…it’s THAT bad lol). I am not looking forward to instructing again anytime soon…naginata, yes, but not work work…

I also have been able to finally grow my nails out long since I’m not training at the moment xD I actually really find them to be an inconvenience and I honestly don’t understand how anyone (especially my younger self) would want long nails. Like yes, it looks pretty and elegant, but like…omg, it really sucks to type and everything lol. Thankfully, I decided to splurge on this (dysfunctional) Bluetooth wireless keyboard that is modeled after a typewriter, so it’s been a little easier to type with my nails, but still…bleh, I hate it lol.

I do have to admit, the pandemic has allowed me time to find creative ways to explore naginata. It makes me wonder though if naginata has changed in it’s priority in my life, or if it has totally enmeshed itself into me to the point where I’m not ‘obsessing’ over it in every single of my life. It takes more energy and effort to make things revolve around it, however, the funny thing is that when I start writing about something else, it just eventually comes back to naginata anyway lol. Whenever I was also asked to collaborate on projects featuring naginata, I also would enjoy it when I’m doing it, so I guess it just became a part of me and my identity to the point where I don’t need to prove anymore how much it means to me.

Although I didn’t get everything done like how I originally planned, I at least got other things done and still was able to take an ample amount of time to reflect on things.

Finding myself again

Recently bought orchids, thinking about buying another rabbit. It’s funny, these were ‘old things’ that I did (also doing it under pressures of being broke), and it’s been a long while. While I have learned new things and I guess have made the new things part of me during the ‘changing process’/losing myself, I guess COVID-19 prevented myself from derailing further and made me find myself again. I feel better, and I think I’ll come back more powerful and knowledgeable than before.

Siddhartha

So for some reason, I have real good timing with plant investments. Not with the rest of the things in my life, though lol.

I decided to take a risk and just go for this opportunity in getting, “the unicorn plant.” Hopefully, everything will go well and it’ll arrive here ok.

I decided to do a little experiment with investing in both my savings, ROTH IRA, stocks, and plants, just to how the cash flow changes over time within these 4 categories. I also want to see why people, whom choose these particular financial paths, just stick with one path and what benefits they experience with it. I just need to equally match the investment amounts to make it fair. Bleh.

I’ll be with nothing, and I need to go back to my original frugal lifestyle pre-promotion (yeah, I did fall for that “lifestyle inflation” trap), but perhaps I just needed this “reset button” in order to really start over with my finances. I think I’m in a different place than before, and now with quarantine, I can just live super frugally compared to before and see how the finances play out.

Hopefully, my vendor will approve and my unicorn plant will arrive ok. If not, I do have another backup but we’ll see.

The Plant Community

Tbh, I didn’t see what the big deal with plants were–I just awlays liked beautiful, scented flowers, but that’s it. I just knew that they die quickly unless you were growing them in a garden.

But for some reason, I never had trouble with plants. I guess I just always went by that simple lesson being taught in my elementary school science class about how plants, “need water and sunlight.” Nothing else more complicated.

I remember getting my first plant (I think it was a begonia?) during undergrad because Mount Holyoke had this tradition of giving a free mini plant to their freshmen (and apparently there is an urban legend that if your plant dies, you won’t graduate!), and how I was like, “bleh, that’s it?…this is just…a leaf..” and I just left it by the Eastern-facing window and had it grow. Damn, that thing just kept growing, while my roommate’s plant died in a week. I just kept watering it and leaving it there. That’s it.

But I forgot what happened to it lol.

I then remember going to the Netherlands and seeing ppl just buy plants and orchids as if it’s no big deal. I loved the flowers, so I began to get addicted and bought a buttload of orchids from Home Depot and put them in my dorm room during my first year of grad school. Loved it, and was able to keep a consistent watering schedule (that’s the trick!)

I guess I just never grew plants growing up because I lived on a low-floor building in NYC (so all the sunlight would get blocked by the skyscrapers).

Then last year, I saw this ‘pink princess philodendron’ somewhere and I just got hooked. I saw some real cute houseplants in some Nordic interior decoration posts and just started to search there.

One plant led to another plant, which led me to see this whole new world: The Online Plant Community.

I remember when I would post some questions on some orchid forms, a while back, that the people were friendly and actually were nice enough to share info (this is totally the opposite of the budo community, where you have that whole ‘ego thing’ going on and also the tradition of ‘stealing the waza’). I also posted on this monstera albo Facebook group about my first albo that wasn’t getting a new leaf, and had so many nice, thorough responses that helped (I also met one of my albo dealers there, even though I was already following her Insta).

Corona has definitely made me pay more attention to the plants, since I don’t have my dojo and stuff to go to. Upon observing the posts from others and seeing their form of ‘drama,’ I cannot help but to think about how different it is from the budo world.

Mind you, I may have these opinions now because I am still pretty new to it (so everything is still in that lally dally phase), but I did notice a few things:

The plant community doesn’t seem to be competitive in the same way as the budo world, and I think it’s due to the nature of the activity; martial artists are historically always fighting and competing, resulting in having different types of human relations skills, while plant people are used to minding their own activity in nature, and really just quietly introverted.

In the budo world, if you want to learn something, a lot of times you would need to be fake and suck up to the higher-ups, because a lot of people are so egotistical. Unfortunately, it is very common for a lot of backlashing at other teachers about their methods, their students’ faulty techniques, as well as a lot of people happily wanting to teach their, ‘RIGHT WAY AND THE ONLY WAY’ to people because they equate it to them feeding their ego.

I haven’t seen this in the plant world. There are different methods to growing plants, but people are not aggressively pushing their opinions onto others about what the best method is.

Because the supply and demand are always disproportionate, you do not have people aggressively trying to steal customers from some sellers, and they don’t do the same aggressive smacktalking in the same way I see higher up budo ppl do, where they are always trying to poach new talent to add a good rep to their school etc etc…

Now, I’m not saying that all budo people are like this, but unfortunately, there are so many of them that I’m starting think that it’s turned into the mere expectation, which really makes you search hard and treasure those people who actually are good-natured and about the art (those are the people I tend to get along with and the only ppl who tend to like me anyway).

I guess with plants, you’re not fighting—you also are not pushy because you know that you cannot control how the plant grows (lol reminds me of that Kung Fu Panda quote), so ppl who take on that hobby for the long-term tend to fit in that personality profile.

A lot of these thoughts and this current quarantine time-period where I’m spending more time with my plants, reminds me of that scene from Fearless, where Jet Li was out in the mountains and in nature as a way to reform himself:

It’s like being out of that competitive, egotistical environment, actually made him more powerful. As for why that is, I still have no idea 🙂 Maybe I’ll learn after our borders reopen.

I hope that the budo community can learn a lot of things from the online plant community. I hope that they can be friendly with sharing info and more open to making allies, rather than competing to be the best. After all, it’s just like that quote from Hanzawa Naoki,

“The world is made up of human relations”

You cannot get better without others.  Friendships and allies go a long way, so make sure you stay good natured and uncorrupted.

My Uncle died..

My phone started buzzing at around 12:50am. Shawn looked at it and I saw that it kept ringing and my dad’s Snorlax caller ID photo appeared. It took me a second to realize that old saying, “If there’s a phone call late in the night, then it’s never about a good thing…” so I picked it up.

“Katie, Moto just departed a few minutes ago…”

“….”

“He just departed. Ok?”

“….”

“ok…”

“Ok, bye.”

I wasn’t shocked, I knew it would come eventually. Tbh, I felt as though I “lost” my uncle a few years ago when he had that kidney failure leading to some brain damage due to low oxygen levels in his brain. He just never was the same again, where he would be interacting like a normal person and would be telling dirty jokes and cursing all the time.

But, when I heard that, I went back to bed and couldn’t go immediately back to sleep. I didn’t start crying nor did I feel a heavy amount of sadness–instead, my mind just went through playing a rush of all my memories with him like a projector. It’s then that I got a little sad and wanted to release a tear, but didn’t.

Then the timing today was absolutely GREAT. I had to teach 5th Grade Boys Health and we had to talk about ‘Death’ during our Stages of Life Lesson. Lovely. The kids had some strong reactions about it and didn’t want to talk about it, so I just told them that I had a hard time teaching them today because my uncle died. I should’ve said that, ‘It’s difficult, but it’s just part of the process of life’ but I guess what I emphasized instead was just that others feel the same way and you’re not alone.

Can’t have a funeral either because of the coronavirus.

Houseplants

One of the most rewarding (passive) activities to do is houseplant care.

Kinda like budo, you have to learn how to ‘nurture’ and take care of others (it’s something that my wise dorm security guard told me); houseplants are a great way to start to practice that.

I never put a crazy amount of work into plants to keep them alive–I always just remembered from Elementary School how plants essentially need sunlight and water…very simple.

I think a lot of people just forget to do it on a regular, scheduled basis, hence why a lot of plants die. My plants at MoHo always lived and grew super big, while my roommate’s and friends had theirs die…

I first got into plants when I visited the Netherlands (a super agricultural country) in 2012 and saw how many beautiful colors the orchids had—I also saw many of the big windows display them so beautifully. I could only imagine how happy those plants were just bathing in the sunlight 😂.

I grew my own…had like 12 orchids at one point. It was real cool to see them rebloom with my weekly watering and fertilizing schedule. I had them for a while until I had to move outta my dorm and had my friend with good windows take care of them..unfortunately, they had too strong of sunlight and didn’t do the consistent watering schedule…so yeah, they all eventually died 🙁 Even my lovely pink ones…

My current favorite plant is my Pink Princess Philodendron (gee, I wonder why :P). I didn’t think I would ever like a houseplant that didn’t bloom flowers, but since this one had some natural pink…hmm…

Philodendrons, in general, are apparently on NASA’s list of air purifying plants…so I figured that it would be a useful plant that can help kill 2 birds with one stone; provide aesthetically pleasing beauty while being healthy 😛

My coworker then began to teach me the whole way of “propagation”–my god, had no idea that you can basically ‘regenerate’ a lot of plants by breaking off a piece…that was so alien to me, because I always thought that if a flower or leaf was picked from a tree, that it would die because of the lack of nutrients…

Nope, not with a lot of houseplants…especially aroids:

I can essentially grow MORE of this pink beauty and even sell it!!!

It was nice to use up my nice pots that I cannot put soil in…A lot of houseplants habits that Baba did made more sense now. It was cool to see this, and this is a completely new realm that I’m starting to get to know and get used to.

The most amazing thing is seeing the new roots grow on a cutting…it’s sooo fucken cool. I also heard that with this particular plant, that once you make a cutting, the new growths on the original mother plant will have MOAR PINK variegation!!! 🤩🤩🤩

This plant also got very expensive, so I’m hoping that this thing will grow and I can sell this to help pay off for some stuff. They propagate rather easily:

I think because of this coronavirus outbreak and the order of being forced to work at home, I have been less exhausted at the end of the day, resulting in me being able to do my chores and maintenance tasks. The daily commute time, the daily makeup routine, etc.. have now been eliminated, so I can actually have enough energy and time to just properly organize and maintain my plants (oh my god, sooo much time wasted commuting!). NOW I can water my plants on a weekly basis and stuff, which helps keep the plants healthy and growing, resulting in me being able to see the positive changes that occur.

It has also been interesting to see how plants adapt and change when you cut it:

If you have a big, nice window, I recommend you getting a houseplant and watering it on a weekly basis. You can just look at the soil to see if it’s super dry–you’ll know. Or, if the leaves are sad and droopy, that means it’s real dehydrated. It’s a lot of fun to see and it’s also a good way to spend time at home during quarantine, without infecting others outside 😛

I have also began to grow appreciation for other (pink) plants:

My god…those beautiful, aesthetically pleasing Instagram posts are dangerous for shopaholics like moi…

But yeah, now that it’s transitioning to Spring and we are having our days longer, I’ll probably notice some more new growths 🙂

Especially from, my god, my variegated monstera albo borsigiana…jesus christ, that thing seriously needs to grow a new leaf…

But yeah, that’s for another time. I’ll also talk about my semihydroponics journey with houseplants and seeing how much easier it is to take care of healthy houseplants with this new growing medium.

Until then, order some houseplants online so that you don’t need to go outside! You can have them delivered to your door and you can order some cute pots to put them in!

For some beginner houseplants, I recommend the following:

  • Pilea pepperomioides
  • Monstera deliciosa
  • Sweetheart hoya
  • Variegated string of hearts
  • Moonstone succulent
  • Phalaenopsis orchid (make sure you fill your sink with water and have the plant soak in it, so that the water can go from the bottom–>up).

These are all plants that I’ve personally had and grew very quickly. Some of my other favorites have had slow growth, regardless of regular care. I’ll go more into those later.

In any case, have fun! I think any plant, even the difficult ones, are manageable so as long as you put the time and energy into the research and care! The internet has also been the best marketplace to buy any plant you want (don’t go basic and just buy that wtvr basic snake plant from Home Depot…come on now…).

Final exam week?…or in-house quarantine?…

…man, this would’ve been an ideal situation had I still been working on my thesis or still working on my master’s…

The dojo was forced to close, now NYC is practically in a complete shutdown. Apparently, we are able to order food and takeout online–but who knows if those deliverymen or restaurant workers aren’t positive for COVID-19?

It is kind of weird not having naginata as my weekly routine…I’m also trying to find ways to train, despite this lockdown. I guess I’ll have to go to Baba’s house or go to the mountains, like the olden days—at least I get the “legit” Musashi experience(笑).

Japan is probably not gonna happen next month, since I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get back into the country, resulting in my work being affected, and Hawaii is now out of the question because of the (practical) ban of domestic travel..so yes, I’m stuck here.

I guess I can take advantage of this time by going over many of the things that I’ve needed to do but put in the back burner for ages; organization, more advertising, etc etc etc…I guess I can think of it all.

I guess now I can make my nice aesthetically pleasing budo interior + study for my licensure exams. I was also thinking about maybe pursuing a license in acupuncture and TCM–couldn’t be any more of a stereotypical martial artist lol.

Well, I guess also this budo blog is something that I can get back to working on.  It’s been on my goal list for a while.

I also cannot believe how time consuming chores and life maintenance are…yuck. 面倒臭い。