Sara. Kit is sleeping in the other room and today.

I'm here to present you my failure vlog.

I'm calling it a failure blog because I'm about to update you on all of my

life's failures. Things have been really,

really tough lately and I have not been able to make videos.

I have not been in the right headspace to make videos.

I have been dealing with things that probably should've been dealt with sooner

but took a ton of energy.

And therefore for the majority of this year I feel like I've been pretty much

knocked out of a headspace where I could think freely or think creatively or

think for that matter at all.

I don't even know where to start.

So I think I'm just going to jump right into it.

Hm.

The first and biggest and most important news that I'm sure many people have

figured out by now is that Tatsu and I are no longer together

and this is really hard. This is really hard to talk about.

We were together for six years and we did so many things together.

We had very similar interests.

We had so many good memories and we had this beautiful apartment and we have the

pets and we had so much going for us.

And I'm sure a lot of people would like to know what happened or understand why.

And to be honest, if I'm completely honest,

there was no foul play. There was no cheating,

there were no major fights or shocks or twists, nothing too dramatic.

It was just that

I made the decision to no longer be in a long distance relationship.

And that was a hard decision to make.

And obviously I do feel guilty

and if I'm totally honest,

it has me feeling a little bit like the villain of my own story.

For those of you who don't know Tatsu that had been going back and forth between

Tokyo and Fukuoka for a really long time.

Although I never expected his career to take off so fast and I was very happy

for him that it did.

It was really hard for me to go from being in a relationship to being alone and

seeing him maybe once or twice a month.

I think Tatsu is an amazing videographer and I think he's going to do amazing

things in Tokyo. I think Tokyo is where he needs to be right now.

It's where all the work is. It's where he's getting so much inspiration.

He is being pushed to become a better creative and I know that he really enjoys

that.

And so although it was me who made the decision to break up and to live

separately,

I did it with the confidence that even if he doesn't feel it right now,

I think eventually he will realize we made the right decision and the decision

to break up with something that tormented me for maybe two years.

I was always unhappy in a long distance relationship and I kept feeling like I

was toughing it out and waiting for a time where it would get better and he

would just come back and we would kind of pursue our own creative thing and

Fukuoka together. But then the longer that he spent away,

the more I realized that that was kind of where my head was at and it wasn't

necessarily where his head was at and the busier he got,

I kind of started to feel like there was no room in his life for me anyway. And

in the last year or so of our relationship,

I became not a great version of myself. I was angry,

vindictive,

bitter and spiteful and jealous and paranoid.

And I just,

I could not be the person that I know I'm capable of being if I'm in the right

state of mind.

I was just like always feeling down about something and I wasn't living my best

life anymore. And at the end of the year,

I went home and I went to therapy and I talked it out.

And even then after therapy,

I couldn't make the decision to move forward until much later.

So,

so if you can see I have the apartment I have the three pets.

It would have been so hard for me as a foreigner with three pets to find another

pet friendly apartment that would allow two dogs and a cat.

So we have decided that I would keep this apartment.

I'm continuing the contract,

I'm paying the rent and now I have a roommate who lives here as well on a

working holiday visa who is also paying half the rent. And that has helped.

But I've also gone out and I now have a part time job so that I can afford food

and I can afford rent and I can afford the medical bills,

the food bills for these three animals and the car, the gas,

I'm just,

there's a lot of things going on that cost money that I have to take care of by

myself now.

And it's been just a really heavy adjustment period and it's taken a lot of

energy and a lot of stress and a lot of tears and a lot of like just getting

through it and trying to figure it out so that I could come out to this space

today or I feel finally like I'm ready to sit down and talk about everything

that's happening and not feel like I'm like on the verge of tears.

Tatsu and I right now I think we are in a better head space than we were in the

beginning,

which is why I think I feel better about addressing this publicly now.

I did not want to do it when it would have been hurtful for him,

but I think that things are moving forward for both of us and we're in this

headspace now or we really don't want to be angry with each other.

I really do respect him as an artist and as a video creator and I'm excited for

him and I just,

I want him to have the best life and I wish him the best and now I can focus

100% on me and improving myself and feeling better and being healthier and going

out and being social and finding my place in the world. Because to be honest,

the past few years I've been really feeling out of place and I think as I get

older, the desire to feel like I belong somewhere is getting stronger.

And that's another, that's a whole other subject.

So I think in the past year or so, my mindset has really shifted to the desire,

the really strong desire to feel like I have a base or a foundation that will

not shift,

that will not change something secure that I can build the rest of my life on.

And I think with a strong foundation you can build and like you can build your

life strongly firmly, if that makes sense.

Just imagine like your base being like a plot of land and your life being like a

house or something. I Dunno. A tower. Yeah, I just,

I really want a solid base and I want to feel like what I have is what I have

forever.

I guess in simple terms like getting married or settling down in a country where

I know I can live there forever.

And the thing about not being with Tatsu anymore is I have myself really

wondering if I'm going to stay in Japan forever. And it's weird.

It's scary to meet,

especially after so long after 15 years to imagine living anywhere else.

But at this point,

if I'm not going to have a husband and kids and a family and a house in Japan,

what am I,

what am I doing every couple of years where I jumped through these hoops to like

get another visa so I can stay longer. What's the point? I just,

at this point I feel like there's nothing really to fight for unless I really

want to stay here.

So I think that over the next year or two I have to do some soul searching and

figure out if this is really the best place for me,

if this is really something I want for myself,

if this is where I want that base, that foundation to be,

I'm supposed to be applying for permanent residency.

I was supposed to start applying this year and I just like what's the point is

where my head is at now, but I don't know if I'll feel that way forever,

so we'll just wait it out and see how it goes.

But yeah, no, I just, I've been really,

I've been really wanting to know just like where I'm settling and what my life

is going to look like so that I can like keep embellishing it and making it

better.

And I think going back to my relationship with Tatsu,

it was too hard for me to imagine a future where we'd settled down when things

were always so uncertain and it was,

he was not in a head space where he wanted to settle down. And I clearly,

I think I am. So I had to make that decision for me.

And that was something that I didn't really understand until I became 30,

to be honest. This is a sentiment I didn't understand in my twenties.

I didn't understand why people would break up over, like not settling down.

But I get it now because I think it's about people having needs and people

having different ideas of where their life should be heading and like what they

should be doing. And sometimes it just feels like a natural instinct.

And I've been doing like a lot of introspective thinking.

I've been thinking about like what kind of person I am,

what kind of person I want to be. I'm one of those people that's like,

I post pages of self help books on Instagram stories sometimes,

especially when I feel like they're relatable or something that someone else

might need to hear.

But I have been thinking a lot about intuition and I think that when you ignore

the things in your heart that you really, really want

it manifests itself in different ways through stress and through anger and

through irritability. And the more that we ignore that inner voice that's like,

I want this or I need this.

And I think we do tend to ignore it because we'll tell ourselves that our needs

are not as important as the needs of the people around us or you know,

like we don't want to look selfish and we don't want to sound like too demanding

or whatever. Like the more that we push that voice down,

the more it kind of just like builds and then it just comes out in ways that we

can't control. And so for me, moving forward,

living more intuitively and like paying attention to how my energy feels,

which changes day by day,

like I think I should be able to like control my emotions better and control my

moods better and hopefully have a more fulfilling life.

So in the beginning of this video, I called this a failure of Vlog,

but I do want to turn it around to like something a little more positive and a

little more hopeful.

Because there are so many things that I can look forward to I think in life in

the upcoming year. Just living in Fukuoka.

I'm very happy that Rachel and Jun live here now.

We have been doing a lot of stuff together.

We go out on adventures and I never bring my camera and I always feel like I

wish I could and now hopefully that I like now that I've checked in with you

guys and I've kind of opened up about who I am and what I'm going through,

hopefully now I can kind of join them on these adventures and they can be my

creative buddies and we can push each other to be more creative and go out and

find new subjects to make videos about and I'm excited for that.

I am really excited for that.

I know that Rachel and Jun moved here because they want it to have community and

I am also very adamant about like building a community where we can all feel

like we have each other and we can rely on each other and I feel like that's

coming together really nicely now. So I am looking forward to that too.

I love having a group of friends that I can send like a little line message out

to and be like,

does anyone want to go see Jurassic world at the outdoor theater?

And like, have a bunch of people show up. It's, it's nice.

I've also been going to the gym lately. I don't know if you've noticed,

but I've lost like five kilograms so like 10 pounds? My friend Sonnie,

who you might know if you watch Rachel and Jun's blogs her husband Joe is my

personal trainer. And it's really, really funny.

I just we go to the gym together. We both have a membership at the same gym,

so we'll go and he pushes me so hard to lift weights and do weight training,

do planks, do fucking squats. I hate them.

And I hate Joe when he makes me do it.

And I have lost a bit of weight and you can see it here.

But Joe's method really has transformed my body in a way that makes me feel more

confident and cute. And so I'm thankful for that. So that's it.

You know, that's, that's everything that has happened in the past, what, eight,

nine months. And it's been a journey,

but we're here now and I think finally now I'm in a head space where I can focus