There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job

by Kikuko Tsumura

needless to say, money was of utmost importance to me right now. I had no idea when I might burn out next.

‘Ever since I burned out at my last job, I haven’t been able to read.’ It sounded like a hopeless exaggeration, but it was more or less the truth. If I read more than one side of A4 a day, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of such despondency that I was unable to function. At the same time, my brain would fire up and I’d be on full alert. It was a really tiresome combination.

(yokozuki) As in the phrase ‘heta no yokozuki’, meaning a person who is passionate about something they show no particular talent for. Here ‘yoko’ (‘side’) indicates something peripheral to one’s main career, while ‘suki’ means like.

After having to leave my old job because of burnout syndrome, I was rationally aware that it wasn’t a good idea to get too emotionally involved in what I was doing, but it was also difficult to prevent myself from taking satisfaction in it. Truthfully, I was happy when people took pleasure in my work, and it made me want to try harder.

‘But I’m always listening to you, I don’t do anything else,’ said Ms Kohashi, with a roughness of tone that brought into clear relief the gap that yawned between ‘listening’ and ‘actually taking in’.

I realised very clearly that I was currently looking at two people who unquestioningly swallowed the idea that talking to someone face to face automatically entailed a lack of psychological distance between you.

Nobody’s life was untouched by loneliness; it was just a question of whether or not you were able to accept that loneliness for what it was. Put another way, everyone was lonely, and it was up to them whether they chose to bury that loneliness through relationships with other people, and if so, of what sort of intensity and depth.