Last night I effectively felt like shit. Yesterday was one of those days. Nothing went as planned and I found myself wandering the streets of an area I did not like because of plans that fell through last minute. This was after spending my weekend preparing for an interpretation gig that will take up my next weekend. My only answer to lingering financial problems is to pile freelance work on top of freelance work in my free time until I have something of a safety net.
So wasting $7 on a round-trip subway to an area I don't like and not being able to meet friends when my free time is becoming increasingly rare, I felt pretty bitter. I needed to eat though and so i passed by a bar that had some African dishes on the menu. This piqued my interest but when I went upstairs I saw they had an event with a $15 entrance free on top of the price of dinner, I felt discouraged and left.
After leaving though, I realized that almost every other shop was a chain store and would cost almost $15 for dinner anyway. What's an extra $15 for a live dj? This is exactly how money tends to disappear in Tokyo (if you want to stay you have to keep ordering drinks too), but given my bad mood I just wanted to find a way to get into a good mood again.
After paying the entrence fee, I did not feel better however. I felt like "fuck I did it again, I spent a lot of money and I'm going to have a shitty night again....wtf is a DJ doing playing Michael Jackson, ive heard this shit enough for 8 lifetimes.". But I immediately responded to myself "Fuck that shit! Society is full of shit but you are trying to turn shit into gold! Find something positive to focus on and work with it. Ignore Michael Jackson, maybe you'll enjoy him after your feeling better."
So I started asking the staff about African food. There were no africans there and I got the sense that the African vibe was a little half assed but the food, chicken and okra with lemon from Senegal, turned out to be good enough, and the staff who seemed stuffy at first started opening up.
Eventually some uncle got drunk on his second or third drink and started speaking to me in a song, complimenting me in 100 ways and introducing me to everyone in the shop. The music changed to hip hop (I only recognized Nas) which I was really in the mood for and I ended up in light conversations with a bunch of different people.
I met a few semi interesting people, the conversations themselves weren't worth the trip, neither was the music, I didn't exchange any contact information, although I would have with one guy if I could have found him. I spent twice as much as I had planned when I walked in there but desire all that, I have no regrets.
The thing that made it worth it was how my mood changed. I can take full responsibility for this. The atmosphere didn't make me happier, I made myself happier, happy enough to enjoy an atmosphere that wasn't exactly the kind I would have preferred. And I properly enjoyed it!
This is how I want to live every day. No matter what kind if shit comes my way I want to be able to face it and smash it into little pieces before processing it into fun and awesome. And somewhere along the line, someone is going to start paying me for this shit and I can quit my day job.
Picture is a different spot from the one mentioned here
