Well, people change after two years. (I am pretty sure I had very nearly the same text with a different girl a few years ago, perhaps this is a common proverb in Japan? Anyway, I have changed again so it is appropriate.)

I am honestly not sure when or how the latest changes started. It is a little more than a year since I came across the easy-to-read spiritual self-help books by Ryuho Okawa. It is a year and a half since I started experiments with brainwave entrainment. It is probably more than three years since I started reading One Cosmos, a right-wing political blog with a side order of perennial religion, or possibly the other way around.

Of course, the sheer process of growing older – specifically to be 50 and above – may also have made a difference. When you are 50, it should dawn on you that you are not a kid anymore. Less than 70 years left of the appointed human lifespan. Time to wise up!

So there is no helping that my on-line journal also changes. Most likely there will continue to be more religion, philosophy and psychology, and less game reviews, anime reviews, and buttpics. I like my new self, there is an added depth to it. I mean, I was already very wide. (Speaking of interests here, not my body.) I would write about many different topics, from the ancient past to the near future, from farming to computers, from mythology to economy. This is because I was thinking about all those things. I may be a bit less wide-ranging now, but going more deeply into some things.

There are also changes that are less obvious. I write very little about work, for a number of reasons, most of all because my employer really really does not want me to write about it. Ideally I should not even let you know whether I go to work on any particular day. But my attitude to work has changed perhaps more than anything else. I used to consider it a curse, a punishment from God. Now I see it as a mercy, an opportunity to express my love for the human world, to pay back some of the good civilization has done for me over the course of my lifetime. Unfortunately, there are still certain things that make it hard for me to be of as much service as I want, but progress has been made.

I hope the changes will continue and even accelerate. I am curious as to who I will become if I continue to live. In some ways, entering a new life phase is like being a child again, with a thousand new ways opening before me. Which will I take? Who will I become? Will I, as the Japanese song said, surpass multiple destinies while I am alive? This may not fascinate you as much as it fascinates me; but if it does, I hope to keep you updated as long as possible.