Is this an article, a personal blog, or an essay? The closest answer may be: a version history of how one brain thinks.
1. This is less an “article” and more an essay
At some point I wondered whether this kind of writing should be called an article or a personal blog. Then I remembered that “essay” exists.
Information itself is not the main character here. The main character is what happens after an event enters the brain: what catches my attention, where the thought jumps next, and what general rule gets extracted from it.
A tedious game mechanic leads to a question about why PC games feel easier to keep playing. A long nap leads to thinking about how absurdly powerful paid leave feels. Once work rumination disappears, the brain starts asking where to go for fun. Eventually the argument collapses into a universal wish: “I would like a personal wallet that produces my living expenses.”
This is not news. It is not a game guide. It has more structure than a diary.
It is an essay that keeps extracting arguments from ordinary experiences.
And when enough of these essays accumulate, something strange happens:
“Wait. Did I upload my brain to GitHub?”
2. It is becoming a “GitHub for the brain,” not a diary
A normal diary can end with: “I took a walk,” “I bought fruit,” or “I saw a strange post online.”
But if thoughts are continuously saved, the archive preserves not only conclusions but also the change history that produced them.
Across different days, fragments accumulate:
- I dislike unnecessary repetition more than difficulty itself.
- If I pay a cost, I want a benefit that justifies it.
- When someone behaves strangely, I automatically ask, “What calculation produced that?”
- Unpredictable branches stay interesting longer than predictable ones.
- I notice who bears a cost and who receives the reward.
Months later, a search through old entries can reconstruct what I tend to reject, what I am willing to pay for, and what kinds of relationships or environments I prefer.
At that point it is no longer just a diary. It is:
**a system specification for myself
- a change log
- bug reports
- improvement proposals**
Everyday life keeps opening tickets.
“This task is needlessly tedious.”
→ Improvement issue.
“Tokyo rent is ridiculous.”
→ Cost-effectiveness issue.
“What happened to the person who quit without another job lined up?”
→ Unresolved-route issue.
A human being, apparently, can be maintained like software.
3. A walk during unemployment mode becomes a supply mission
When work rumination disappears, the empty mental capacity does not remain empty for long.
The next process starts:
“Where should I go for fun?”
During a long break, even sleeping late is not a catastrophe. A walk for exercise can turn into a strange scavenging mission.
Walk.
Enter a store.
Find grilled meat at 20% off.
Acquire bananas.
Remember: “I barely ate watermelon this year.”
Find one at 5% off.
Add one more item for no particularly noble reason.
The walk was supposed to reduce body weight. The return trip increases carried weight.
A little earlier, there had also been an entire melon for 500 yen.
What is funny here is that this is not merely bargain hunting. Two triggers combine: “I have not really done this seasonal thing yet” and “the price is a little better than usual.” Suddenly the product becomes a quest item.
Walk
→ monitor discounts
→ recover seasonal event
→ return home
Daily life becomes a side quest.
Even a mere 5% discount is enough when attached to “I barely ate watermelon this year.”
The decision is not driven by the discount alone. Price, novelty, seasonality and current desire are being scored at once.
Another commit enters the brain repository.
4. “Could you give it to me?” is understandable. “You charge money?” opens an issue
I saw a social-media story about someone who had won a prize at an arcade. A stranger asked whether they could have it because their child wanted one.
Asking is not the strange part.
The prize had taken real money to obtain, but the owner offered it for a very low amount because the other person had also struggled to win one.
The reply was essentially:
“You want money for it?”
Conversation over.
The interesting part is not the amount. It is the hidden calculation:
Why did the other person’s acquisition cost suddenly become zero?
“My child wants it” may be a powerful reason inside that family. It is not a coupon that turns a stranger’s property into a free item.
If you want it, there are options:
Buy it second-hand.
Use a flea-market app.
Try to win it yourself.
Accept the offered price.
So the brain adds a rule:
Another person’s circumstances ≠ my obligation to absorb their cost.
When I see stories like this, analysis often arrives before anger.
“How did that calculation produce that conclusion?”
And the internal debugger starts again.
5. For some people, the partner’s enjoyment is itself a reward
Another post argued that a sexually attentive person may not simply “love sex,” but may enjoy making a partner happy.
The thread then stretched into claims about driving skill, karaoke skill, personality types and sexual ability. That part is anecdotal, not established science.
But the central idea has a close psychological concept: sexual communal strength, the motivation to be responsive to a partner’s sexual needs.
Research has linked higher sexual communal strength with greater sexual and relationship satisfaction for individuals and partners. At the same time, a different pattern — continually meeting the partner’s needs while neglecting one’s own out of pressure or obligation — can be harmful.
So this feedback loop is real enough to study:
“The other person is enjoying this.”
→ That reaction becomes rewarding to me.
The important variable is not a list of personality traits that supposedly predicts “skill.” It is what the person experiences as a reward.
For one person, only their own sensation may be salient. For another, the partner’s response loops back into their own enjoyment.
Like a game in which the scoreboard does not stop at your own points; the other player’s reaction is part of the reward UI.
But “I want to make you happy” and “I must erase my needs for you” are different systems.
Confuse them, and generosity turns into overtime.
6. Tokyo rent makes the brain ask: “How much do you pay each month for that level of city?”
A post from someone who moved from Tokyo to Osaka praised a familiar combination: plenty of urban convenience, cheaper restaurants, easy access to nearby cities, and much lower housing costs.
The broader point is not limited to Osaka.
Nagoya, Fukuoka, Sapporo, Sendai, Kobe and other large cities can provide substantial urban functionality without Tokyo-level housing costs.
Tokyo obviously has real advantages:
More kinds of jobs.
Headquarters concentration.
Events.
Stores.
Transit density.
The enormous number of options generated by population density.
The question is whether someone who does not use that density every day needs to pay a monthly “Tokyo premium.”
According to At Home’s June 2026 asking-rent data, single-person apartments in Tokyo’s 23 wards had reached new highs in the company’s series for 25 consecutive months. Rents are rising in other major cities too, but Tokyo’s housing burden remains unusually heavy.
So the brain starts running a crude equation:
Benefits available only in Tokyo
÷ additional fixed cost of living in Tokyo
And then:
“Would the difference be more fun if it went to travel, food, or investment?”
This is not an argument that Tokyo lacks value.
It is an argument against paying every month for high-end functionality you rarely use.
7. The people who leave are more interesting than the people who stay
Then I remember someone from an old workplace who left in their mid-forties.
No next job had been arranged.
The attitude was roughly:
“It’ll probably work out.”
That person’s later life is strangely interesting.
People who stay are comparatively predictable.
Same company.
Same industry.
Similar human network.
Raises and transfers may happen, but the path still has continuity.
Life can always surprise us, but a rough predictive model exists.
The person who leaves is different. The moment they exit, the information feed stops.
Did they find another job?
Did they take a long break?
Did they switch industries?
Did income rise or fall?
Did “it’ll work out” actually work out?
The number of possible routes explodes at the branch point.
That is why the person who left can remain more interesting than the people who stayed.
It is not only concern.
It is also genuine curiosity about what was generated after that decision.
8. “Quitting without another job always ends badly” is too absolute
Online career advice often says that quitting before securing another job “always ends in disaster.”
The risks are real.
Income stops.
Pressure can distort the next decision.
Job options differ by age and occupation.
Family obligations and fixed expenses reduce flexibility.
But “always” is a different claim.
Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare reported that among people aged 15–54 who had left a job within the previous year, the number moving from regular employment to regular employment reached 880,000 in 2024, the highest level in the previous decade.
The Statistics Bureau also reported a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 2.5% in June 2026.
Neither statistic proves that a mid-forties job seeker will have an easy time. Individual circumstances matter enormously.
But reality is not a single track:
Quit
→ immediate collapse
The old colleague’s “it’ll work out” may have been reckless. It may also have worked perfectly normally.
Both routes remain possible.
And because the outcome is unknown, the story stays interesting.
9. Curiosity is attracted to unfinished branches
Research on curiosity shows that humans and other animals seek information to reduce uncertainty even when that information offers no direct material reward.
“You gain nothing by knowing this.”
Still, you want to know.
That perfectly describes wondering about someone who left years ago.
Their outcome barely affects my life.
I do not need to contact them.
Knowing would not make me richer.
Yet:
“What happened after that choice?”
remains compelling.
Part of the reason is that the person is not a total stranger. Some input variables are known.
I know roughly what they were like.
I know their life stage.
I know how they left.
I remember the attitude.
The input exists. Only the output is missing.
That is irritating to a predictive brain.
It built a model and never received the answer key.
An open issue with no closing comment.
10. In the end, everything is about cost, reward and predictability
Discount groceries.
The expectation that a stranger should give something away for free.
Finding another person’s enjoyment rewarding.
Tokyo rent.
The unknown future of someone who quit without a plan.
These topics look unrelated.
But the same questions keep running underneath them:
What does this cost?
Who bears the cost?
What counts as the reward?
Is the trade worth it?
How predictable is the outcome?
If it is unpredictable, what was the actual result?
That is the recurring cognitive loop.
So tiny everyday events become samples of how the brain works.
A 500-yen melon, a 5%-off watermelon, Tokyo housing costs and a long-gone colleague all end up in the same repository.
As the archive grows, it reveals less about “what I wrote about” and more about how I tend to think.
That is why “personal blog” feels slightly too weak, and even “essay” is not quite enough.
The better name may be:
GitHub for the brain.
People who stay on the stable branch are comparatively easy to imagine.
The people who branch away are the ones whose future becomes invisible.
So the internal issue tracker still contains:
“What happened to the midlife employee who quit without another job lined up?”
Status: unresolved
That may be the most interesting issue of all.
Verification notes and sources
- At Home, “June 2026 asking-rent trends for major Japanese cities”
https://www.athome.co.jp/corporate/news/data/market/chintai-yachin-202606/ - Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Analysis of the Labour Economy 2025, Part I Chapter 2
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/wp/hakusyo/roudou/25/1-2.html - Statistics Bureau of Japan, Labour Force Survey, June 2026
https://www.stat.go.jp/data/roudou/sokuhou/tsuki/ - Monosov, I. E. (2024), Curiosity: primate neural circuits for novelty and information seeking, Nature Reviews Neuroscience
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-023-00784-9 - Balzarini et al. (2021), The detriments of unmet sexual ideals and buffering effect of sexual communal strength
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33539155/ - Dyadic research on sexual communal strength, motivation and satisfaction
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36223095/
Note: Individual social-media accounts, employers, names, locations and other identifying details have been removed. Claims directly linking personality-type labels to sexual skill were not retained because sufficient scientific support was not established.
