I like to think about everything that happens in my life as a learning experience! No matter what happens in my life I always want to look at the experience as an opportunity for personal growth and development. I always ask my self what can I learn from this experience and how can I use it to prepare for my next experience and make me a better person. Needless to say, I had to do a lot of thinking after last night!

I woke up this morning wanting to feel better after being up most of the night with either stomach flu or food poisoning. It was so incredibly challenging for me last night and most of the early morning. When I woke up, I thought I was feeling better until I drank some water and it caused great pain. So I was lying there in bed thinking about what I could do to feel better and what lessons I could possibly learn from this experience.

As I lay there saying to myself, I intend to feel good, I reflected on the past 24 hours of my life. I met my friend who is visiting from California at Becker’s Ikebukuro at 12:02pm. We talked to one of the supervisors there about the possibility of doing an art exhibit there. Later that afternoon we had lunch at Saizeriya in Ikebukuro on the Westside of Ikebukuro Station. After that we headed to Shibuya and relaxing at Starbucks Ikebukuro Station.

That evening met up with some friends at Becker’s Café Deli, Ikebukuro and later moved on to Tofuro Isakaya where two more people joined us. We had a very enjoyable time there! I had a conversation with some friends about “trying” versus “doing” doing something. I explained to them that I have been working to eliminate that word from my vocabulary and my since I do not think that it serves a useful purpose. I believe that trying is not the way to accomplish anything since trying has a built in excuse for never accomplishing anything. “At least I tried,” people often say on their way to never really accomplishing anything.

I suggested that “doing,” or as Nike multimillion-dollar slogan suggests, “just do it,” may be a more appropriate way for accomplishing or getting things done. In this midst of this conversation I reflected to an example in my own life about “trying” to do something.

A few years ago I met an artist at the San Jose San Festival in California. He was commissioned to create a piece of art at the festival along with a few other “Bay Area” artists. As a downtown resident of San Jose for many years, I had regularly attended the San Jose Jazz Festival. On this weekend however, I ad been lying in bed recovering from a recent operation and had no intention on making it to the festival.

It was Sunday late afternoon about 4:30pm and the festival was almost over. For some reason I felt compelled to attend the festival at least for a few precious moments if possible. Looking back at this experience now I know that fate was at work. I had thought about it over and over again without taking any action. Finally, instead of trying to visit the festival I decided I would do it. I put some clothes on, picked up my crutches and started my two or three block journey to the San Jose Jazz Festival. It was there that I met my friend the artist working on a beautiful painting outdoors in the middle of this chaos. We became fast friends and have been friends for many years now.

Last year we talked about the possibility of one day displaying and selling his work in Japan. I invited him to come and visit Tokyo sometime and he said that he would think about it. . He thought about for a while and finally decided to visit here in January of this year. He was excited about the possibilities in Japan and we talked about doing something here in the future.

He visited Japan and second time this year and once again enjoyed his stay. We got excited about the possibilities once again and we kept talking about doing something together in Japan. He decided to visit Japan once again and we would focus our attention on not “trying,” but on doing something this time. So I began to do the groundwork before his arrival July 17, 2007.

After all this talking (trying) to do something, it was amazing how quickly things happened once we decided to do something.

(11:39am) I just felt an earthquake here in Tokyo! It was a jolt that did not last very long.

My significant other identified a place that we could start. She researched the information and we visited there on July 17. The next day (July 18), my artist friend and I visited there and he liked the place. On July 19, we met another friend of mine who had identified another space we could use to display his work and visited there. We decided that we would visit the café gallery again on July 21 to show my other friend who would be working with us the location. While we were there I talked to someone who happened to be the owner. He looked at my friends work and invited us to exhibit in his café gallery. Later that day, we met another friend of mine who is a jazz musician. He gave us additional contacts to work with. In less than a week of “doing,” we had identified to definite places to exhibit and many other options! This experience reminded me how important it is to focus on “doing,” not “trying” to do or on the reason why we can’t get something done.

(12:00pm)

I am still not sure what I can learn from having food poisoning or the stomach flu except that it is really important that I take better care of my health! And perhaps, that is the most important lesson of all!