A cold Saturday night in February 2024

Dimmed lights. I face the window of my rectangular bedroom facing south. Ninth floor in a quiet residential area. All I can see is the wall of apartments with lights on. Of course, it’s evening time. Upbeat music plays in the speaker. Oranges, “‘cause every time I feel you, it feels like.”

I sip some convenience store red wine, which I bought because I needed my creative juices flowing as I still had work to do. It’s a Saturday in February, and it is freezing out there. We have faced a couple of days of summer-like warmth, and going back to 3 degrees Celsius was definitely something I was not looking forward to.

There are a couple of slides to work on, but I write this text during a self-proclaimed break time. I face my window again, and I see an airplane that has just departed from Haneda airport. Destination unknown. I look at the lights emitted by the plane and get hypnotized by the patterns. Lest we say, I have probably been drinking too much wine since we started this.

Dimmed lights. I am sitting on my orange chair. A barely illuminated room. All by device. I take another sip of wine. Refreshing. I should seek other sources of warmth now, but here I am. Liquor blanket.

The music changes—vocal dance music. I still have work to do, but in the meantime, I think about these lines. My room is full, and so am I. This is the perfect mindset for a Saturday evening: drinks in, mind out, believing that my choices will make some sense soon, and enjoying the high while I can.

The music changes again. I face the white ceiling, and the cold wind is coming from the window. They don’t have the double-layered windows we used to have back in Hokkaido. What a loss. My feet feel cold, but my body is warm. Liquor blanket.

Construction cranes on the horizon. The city is constantly changing. We keep moving, and so do the machines. Red lights blinking from the building as if they were asking the planes, “Please don’t hit this building, look at this red light, and don’t get too close.” In the meantime, I keep sipping. Liquor blanket.

It’s almost as if I entered a flow state because of wine and keep typing just for the sake of typing. Some would say, “omg this is so meta.” To which I would probably reply, “Yeah, kinda. I guess.”

It’s been twenty minutes. It’s time to get some food and get back to work. Dimmed lights. Red wine. Saturday night. At this very moment, life is good.

In the meantime, I eat spicy grilled chicken and sweet potatoes and dream of living my best life, whatever that means.