First Things First

Dear 長谷部さん、

I have to admit, I was a little surprised when I read in a book review that you wrote, "Order is the spice of life."  Order is great and all, but the "spice" of life?  Now granted, this book review had been Google translated from German to English on a book written in Japanese.  But still, I couldn't quite push the idea that when your friends approached you on a Friday night with, "You up for some fun?"  you would reply in a sort of nerdy excitement, "Yes!  Let's organize our sock drawers by color!."  It was enough to send me into gales of laughter. (It still is)

But then last week, I attended a church meeting where I learned that antitheses of fear, commotion and confusion found so prominently on our society are faith, order and love.  Order as in antithesis of commotion?  Not peace?  Not meditation?  Not any of those things that indicate not moving?

It gave new credence to your mantra.

Then again, I finally reached the part of your book where you were "quoted" to have said "order is the spice of life" and found that that's not what you said at all.  (Now granted, this is a rough translation supplied largely by Google and partly by the fact that "Miregi" isn't an English word - so I've improvised based off of my understanding of Japanese and mostly of Chinese characters.)  "While in Germany, I've adopted the attitude that 'Organization is half of life'.  If you try to stay organized on a regular basis, then your life and work will have order and discipline as well.  So, staying organized is an important part of my life.  I hate the feeling of not being ready.  The day after a game is lost, sometimes you just get frustrated and do not to do anything and the result is a messy room.  But the mess of the room will just lead to more frustration and despair.  If, instead, you start to organize, then your mind will also become organized in the process and your mood will lighten."

Okay, so, pardon my horrible translation.  One day I will understand you more than the gibberish that Google spits out at me.  It made sense now why you felt the need to be organized and I started to understand how you accomplish so much.  It's because you first focus on being organized and staying organized rather than my own method of living life, which involves running around endlessly trying to do everything while the upkeep of my own self and my own life falls into such disarray that I often fail to accomplish much of anything and if I do, it's much less than I what I had hoped for.

Saturday, I got up, with a long laundry list of things I needed to do but I started first with cleaning.  And organizing my life.

It was a great start.  In the process, I got my choir piece arranged.  I found a way to charge an old computer of my sister's.  All of this allowed me to talk to my sister in Paris without being overly worried about the things I hadn't yet done.

The spice of life?  Definitely.  

But since then, I've found that I could clean day after day after day.  And have you seen my lab?  I'm not sure it's been perfectly organized since the day it opened.  Meanwhile, research is just waiting and waiting and waiting for me to do something with it.  Any hopes of adopting the phrase, "Labview is the spice of life?"

Love,
Me

No, this isn't Hase-san but I found this
image in a folder that I use to post-process
images for research.  Apparently, at one time
I used this in a Matlab program.  Hilarious, no?