After work, I spend my time reading books, watching movies or dramas, and sometimes playing games. I’ve already read 45 books so far this year.

Yet, I’m not sure if I’m truly enjoying it. While I do find pleasure in these activities, I also feel like I’m merely passing the time. This leaves me feeling a bit confused.

Ultimately, this comes down to how I feel about my life. If I felt I were truly living, I wouldn’t have these doubts.

If every day were a matter of survival—if life felt more visceral—there would be no room to wonder if I’m really living. I would know for sure that I wasn’t just wasting time.

Since I cannot escape this feeling, I need to find a better way to handle it. Even if I were to become a billionaire by some chance, I believe nothing would change. This is an inescapable part of the human condition.

I would use “Era” to describe the update, but my daughter started her junior high school life.
Youth and hope are a perfect fit. When I attended the entrance ceremony, I felt it strongly.

What is most pleasing is that it looks like she is enjoying her new school life. It’s super encouraging and reassuring to me. That’s all I could hope for.

She is growing, and now is the most complicated age of her life. Still, she sometimes seeks physical affection with me. I’d like to give her everything she needs, and I won’t push anything she really dislikes.

She will need to understand that, actually, life is going to be difficult, though it’s worth living. Duty and responsibility are just increasing, but they come along with joy and freedom.

I hope she can feel some sort of happiness in living her life with all of those.

Everything is basically fine as usual.
My family and I are doing fine.

No. Not everyone is fine, as my father-in-law had a hip fracture.
But I heard he is commuting to the dam for his job, so it’s not the worst scenario where he is forced to stay in bed.

Every day I’m doing my job, taking care of my family, and spending the night reading books.
It’s as usual, even boring.

In my company, the trend of AI has come. I’m not sure which wave of the trend we’re in, but now the usage is being tracked by each VP level.
I’m acting as a kind of guru for my team to share the information, like what can be done by AI tools, their setup procedures, and use cases.
Since we are not doing programming, the benefit of the AI Agent is somewhat limited, but still, it should be important to follow the trend, as no one can predict what will come next and how things can change.

It’s the start of April, and I’m looking forward to the warm/hot temperature.

My older daughter will graduate from elementary school tomorrow.
It’s an important milestone.

From Apr, she will need to commute to the junior high school by train.
It will take 50 min from door to door, but she will need to wake up around 6 AM.
I really hope she can overcome any challenge in her life.

For some reason, it was difficult to take time for writing here.
I continue reading, and I have beaten Resident Evil Requiem.
This weekend, we could have had a family trip to Chiba for the first time in this 1 year as my daughter doesn’t need to go to a private tutoring school anymore.
I need to focus on my work, and I want to have at least 7 hours of sleep.

So, the time is valuable.

Today is my company’s holiday, so I don’t want to work.
But on the other hand, I couldn’t come up with a good plan to spend the day off.

It’s serious.
Even if I have time and money, if I’m not able to find a way to use them, it means my life is kind of meaningless.

But a more important premise here is that there’s no meaning for anyone’s life unless it’s defined by themselves.
So, trying to discover is the wrong way to create the meaning, because there’s nothing by itself.

Back to my day off story.
I thought I could go to Kamakura to stroll around the area, but in the end, I lost motivation after considering the details.
So I’m here at Saizeriya near my house to read a book.

Today’s flow itself is a bit chaotic, and the book I’m going to read is a non-fiction book about the criminal of Zama Nine Murders.
Embracing the chaos.

I’ll need to be a interviewer for the open position for my team, but it’s in English.
I had that experience several times in the past, but still it’s not comfortable as it’s 1on1 and I’m not native speaker.
I need to review the resume and come up with enough question.
I need to show my smile in nice way and be friendly for the external candidate.

The bar for English communication was significantly lowered in these days as I need to use it for my job.
But still I can feel small challenges for the communication in English as I can compare the experience with Japanese’s one.

Actually it can be stressful, so I’m even wondering if my current job is helpful for having happier life.
When I was young, I believe developing myself hard in challenging environment is the way.
But I’m getting older.
I’m not sure but this can happen due to multiple possibilities (some of them can be wrong); changing the concept of value, getting smarter about the life, loosing motivation, time is becoming more valuable than other factors in my life, etc.

The exam season for my elder daughter finished.
We can say it’s succeeded, as she passed the entrance exam for her first-choice private junior high school.
Some of her friends failed to pass their first-choice.

I’m doing well now without having the experience of studying in college.
But I assume it’s too challenging and needs tremendous luck.
So I want her to study well in her school time and go to a good college.

It’s not easy to define and achieve one’s own “happy life”, but I don’t want her to find critical difficulties in her life.
Money and a good environment are essential to avoid unwanted hardship at least.

The school is not first-class, I would say, but I’m proud of her as it’s definitely the fruit of her good effort.

The year-end shutdown was over so quickly, and the subsequent long weekend in Japan is now also finishing.
Time flies, especially if we are enjoying the time.

During the vacation, I felt one thing.
I’m not able to verbalize it, but those blank or taking a moment is inducing a change in the way of thinking.
It facilitates a change in my concept of the values.

I’m back at work, but my work feels a bit different from before.
I might have become less serious, and it might be good not to be too serious.
I might have developed a thick skin, which is helpful to protect my mental health more.

I’m not so sure, but I’m feeling myself has changed a bit after having the shutdown holidays.

I’ll need to pay over 3 million yen in taxes in April for the final tax return, and 1.2M yen will be additional burden as resident tax in 2026.
It’s unexpected, but the trick is the share price of my company.

I kept receiving RSU for several years, and the amount is based on the price at the time of granting.
But the income is calculated based on the price at the time of vesting.
So if prices increased 2 times from the time of the grant, the salary amount by RSU will also double.

In the end, my 2025 annual income is expected to be slightly short of 30 million yen.
And I’ll need to sell the stocks to make money, because 3M yen is too much to pay from my available cash.

I understand this situation is fortunate, because more tax means more income.
But anyway, I’ll need to continue to work, and travelling to Hawaii is still too expensive for me even with this saraly.

I’ve read about 130 books this year.
It’s almost four to five times higher than the previous year, after I changed my habit.

This is interesting.
Even though I spent a lot of my time reading the books, only 130 books could be finished.
The number of books I can read in my life is quite limited, especially comparing it with the number of books published in the world.
It shouldn’t be so different, even for much smarter people; it cannot be 10 times.
And even if it’s 10 times, still far less than the published books in the year.

What we can achieve in life is very small. It would become notable, particularly when our end of life is approaching.
I want to be wiser gradually on how to spend my time and leave the least regret for my life.