frozen octopus

My thinking has shifted a lot over the past month. That trip to the post office was really jarring for me. It was like all the news I was seeing from the US was suddenly in my face. Being across the ocean, I have the luxury of turning on or tuning out the barrage of news. Being told that I can't send our stuff to a place and being from the place made things very real. Then it got me ruminating on what this all actually means. As I zoomed out levels higher and higher, I could really start to see what is really happening.

Not being able to ship small things to the US isn't about economy. It is about cutting off people from their homelands. It is about messing with people’s interests and hobbies. It's about unworldly people bothering worldly people. Cutting people's ties to the globe. Ruining relationships. Choking scenes like music and art.

It is very discouraging and energy-draining. That is probably their aim. Make everyone so tired that they just give up. I was drained for about two weeks for sure. I am not drained anymore, though. We figured out how to flow around this problem. That will be true for any other problem set in front of us.

Don't let them drain your energy.

There is an app called Apple Music for Artists that I like to open up from time to time. There are a bunch of other ones, but I chose the one just to get a quick outside view of the band. Things like which songs are getting played more than others. I use that for setlist making. It is also fun seeing the list of places where we are getting played for me. It makes you feel like you are part of the globe.

Over the weekend, I opened it up while on a little trip to the ocean in Chiba Prefecture. I noticed a Top Radio Spins area this time. It shows which songs of ours are being played on different radio stations. I didn't know radio was even playing us, actually.

I've had my head so buried in the sending merch troubles with the US tariffs that I lost focus on all the other things. Seeing that radio is playing our release reset my brain and gave me new energy.

I love this blog and blogging. Realizing I need a system for this thing though. I need a stricter date I have to publish on but is still fun somehow. Daily is too much like a streak. Weekly is too much like a work calendar. It needs to be more frequent than monthly.

While I was looking at my calendar the moon phase jumped out again. I love the moon phases. The moon rules. Using the moon phases as a posting calendar is perfect for me. It is always up in the sky so it would be an amazing blog post prompt.

There is also a nice option of post amount options. You get once a month (full), bi-monthly (full, new), quarterly, or even eight times (gibbous, crescent).

I also like how, if I went with quarterly for example, the posts would be essentially weekly but out-of-sync with the usual calendar. Also get the added bonus of the emoji.

I am going to try a moon phase blog and come up with a theme or something for each phase. When I have thoughts, ideas, or find things to share I can sort them into the correct phase. Hopefully when it is time to post on each phase there will be a bucket filled with things to post.

I went to the post office in Tokyo yesterday with two packages to mail. Our new release came out lately. The orders are coming in, and they need to be shipped. This is the life of a drummer in a two-piece punk band.

JP Post has an app where you fill out the shipping and customs info. You receive a QR Code and use it to make a label in the lobby of the post office. Once I got a system set up, this process is fast and easy.

I got the labels ready for the package to the US and brought my two packages to the counter. The post office worker had an "oh no...here we go" look on their face.

They proceeded to tell me that the post office has suspended all commercial package shipping to the US for the time being due to current US policies. They handed me back the first package with apologies. I hadn't read the official news yet, which left me in a position of not knowing what to respond.

The second package was going to West Tokyo. They were relieved they could get that one sent out for me.

Now I am in a spot of trying to figure out how to get orders for our cassettes to my home country. There are other delivery services, but we would need to raise the cost of shipping a lot. Contrary to what the current US President thinks, we aren't going to pay the extra shipping costs. That extra cost gets added to the bill of the person in the US that ordered it.

In a fun "battle" with the service that distributes music to music stores like Apple Music or Spotify right now. The band I am in has songs that are about 75% Japanese and 25% English on our new release. When I submitted the release, I needed to choose a language for the release. 75 is more than 25, so I selected Japanese. Then, with each song, I set the language to what language it is in. I clicked send and waited to hear from them.

I got a form email saying due to some issue, one of the stores can't accept it. I wrote back asking what the issue is and got a response saying due to some language issue, they couldn't submit it.

As a test, I resubmitted the album and set the release language to English and set the tracks to their language. I am waiting to see if English is okay for whatever store is blocking submission.

I don’t really get why I need to set the language at all for our music though.