January 23-29, 2026

 January 23–29, 2026

The start of last weekend felt mildly promising, at least musically. I picked up the guitar. Sat at the keyboards. Recorded a handful of rough sketches—fragments, not songs. Nothing like the fire I had in December, when ideas seemed to arrive fully formed and refused to let me sleep. But it was a step up from where I’d been: stuck, circling, waiting for something to light.

At the same time, the familiar background feelings have been creeping back in. The blahs. A low-grade depression. A trace of anxiety. Not as dark as before—no full collapse, no disappearing onto The Depression Couch for hours at a time—but unmistakably closer to that older baseline than to whatever I touched at the end of last year.

Then came the practical hit. Next week, and probably the weeks after, my work schedule will be thin. I have a base salary, but most of my income is hourly, and I function better when I’m busy. Last week I had a business trip to Tokyo followed by teaching, presenting, running sessions all week. That rhythm helps me.

When the workday ends and the structure drops away, that’s when things tend to slide.

All of this forced a conclusion I’ve been circling for a while now: I can’t claim that the Diane Method works if I’m not actually doing it.

I’ve talked a lot about returning to it. I’ve talked myself around it. I’ve stalled. Every time I look at the memoir chapters I wrote, I feel resistance. I don’t love them. I don’t feel pulled back toward them. And fiction hasn’t opened the door either.

But there’s no other way to test this.

If the method mattered—if it was more than creative coincidence—then going back into it should change something. My mood. My clarity. My playing. Something.

So I’m setting a simple, limited experiment.

Starting tomorrow morning, I’m going back to the walks. Back into the rice fields. Back into telling pieces of my life out loud, one chapter at a time.

I’ll come home. I’ll shape them. I’ll edit them. I’ll do the same work I was doing when this all started.

I’m also taking time off next week. Not hiding from work—there just isn’t any. Which gives me a clean stretch to see what happens without distraction.

Next Saturday, I have a recording session with my band in a proper studio. It matters to me that I play well. That I’m settled. That I’m present. If this process affects anything, I should feel it there—in my hands, in my timing, in how I listen.

I want the fire back. Not chaos. Not self-destruction. But that focused, energized, grounded intensity I had in November and December.

I checked the site analytics. I probably shouldn’t have. No one’s finding it. No one’s testing the method for me. Which means there’s no one else to wait on.

If this works, I should know it in my own body again.

So I’m giving it a week. No theorizing. No defending. No explaining.

Just doing the work—and seeing what comes back.

Weekly Journal is published every Friday (Japan time).