From 'Here and Now' to 'Far Away'

Lately, I'm still listening to Hiroji Miyamoto and Elephant Kashimashi.
While they occasionally bring out a passionate or wild feeling, the clean progression of the sound and the dry quality of the lyrics feel familiar to my ears.
Lately, I've been listening to 'Saraba Seishun' (Farewell Youth) a lot.

'Koyoi no Tsuki no You ni' (Like the Moon Tonight) is for someone walking while looking toward the future, wondering when that day will come.

This song is for someone walking while remembering the past, and the season seems to be winter.
It's a song about remembering a youth that has now become distant—whether it was a lover, a friend, or events from long ago.

The opening line,
♪Far... far... far away, those far away days♪
has a feeling that gradually builds up.

It feels like it speaks of the sadness of time passing, but
as someone looking back on a year I'd rather not remember, the voice singing about this increasingly distant past actually sounds refreshing to me.

While listening to the song, I suddenly wondered.
Where exactly is the boundary that separates the 'here and now' from the 'far away' past?

Thoughts and anxieties always linger in my head, and the next event hits my mind like a billiard ball, knocking out the previous 'now' with a jolt of pain.
And then that one dwells dully in my head for a while.
During the particularly busy times last year, it was a constant cycle of that.

It felt like I was focused on the present, but that anxiety was about whether things in the past had gone well, or worries about things that might not even happen. That's what it felt like.

Once my mind and body, my consciousness, let go of that incredibly busy time and the obsessions and anxieties of that moment before I knew it, I feel like I learned a different way of distancing myself than before.
I have finally been able to organize it in my mind as a 'distant' event.

I'm not a liar, time has just passed
(Elephant Kashimashi, 'Saraba Seishun')

I don't have that same intensity now, but I am certain that the me back then did everything I possibly could.

I have started to move toward a 'distant' place.
However, I want to remember it, so I am writing it down.
I spent a lot of this year looking back with regret, but at the same time, there were definitely things I saw through to the end.

Even before I was entrusted with it, I knew it wasn't a job I was suited for.
As I went along, I realized as expected that it wasn't for me.
Setting aside aptitude, it is extremely difficult to complete that kind of work alone, and without mistakes.
People around me disappeared one after another, even trying to coordinate was difficult, and short-deadline tasks kept coming down on me.
My superiors seemed to be watching the workplace and worrying, but they didn't have any way to deal with it.

In this situation, as the year was ending, I told the workplace one thing.
I have no intention of continuing this job.
I don't know who will be in charge, but next time, I want you to ensure a system where work can be divided and support for coordination can be provided within the workplace.

The person in charge for this fiscal year is now at a critical stage.
This year's members don't talk to me.
I don't talk to them anymore either.
I am right next to them, but I am no longer needed.

They probably haven't noticed, and I don't know what part of my work or that suggestion of mine was useful, or to what extent.
The person in charge last year was a mess.
Even though I was in such trouble, he didn't care.
It wouldn't be unreasonable if that's what they thought.

However, this year they are moving forward as a team on the path that I desperately carved out and connected last year.
There is the frustration of not being able to join in, the helplessness of having been just a sacrificial lamb, and the thought that if this system had existed last year, things might have been a little different, but the version of me that was ruminating on that over and over has also become quite distant.
With the form grown from the seeds I sowed as my substitute, I am quietly withdrawing and recharging my strength.