I heard that Tokyo recorded rain every single day for a whole month in September. Nakanojo had almost the same weather, with long, gloomy autumn rains continuing day after day.
Just before the rice harvest, some of the rice plants fell over. To save as much of the crop as I could, I cut the rice by hand along the edges of the field on Saturday. But the rain kept falling. The autumn rain front stayed over the area into the following week, right when I had planned to start harvesting — and on top of that, a typhoon was also expected to arrive. The harvest was delayed again, and again.
I had drained the water from the rice fields ten days before the planned harvest, but it made no difference. The fields were still deeply flooded, and there was simply no way to bring in the harvest.
The endless rain left me feeling deeply down. I had little motivation to work in the vegetable fields either. On top of that, my computer settings were a complete mess. My attempts at voice input kept failing, and I had no energy left to update the Sato Farms blog. My forex trading wasn't going well, either.
It was the most unmotivated I had felt since the COVID-19 pandemic. ...And I still hadn't started harvesting the rice.
Struggling with Voice Input, Stuck in a Computer Quagmire
Finally, I decided to pay for the voice input software called "Typeless."
Until then, I had tried three options — "Aqua Voice," "Typeless," and Windows Voice Typing — thinking I could switch between the three and get by for free. But Typeless and Aqua Voice both burned through their free usage limits in no time.
That left Windows Voice Typing, and I just could not get the settings right.
I tried every fix I could think of while consulting Claude AI, but nothing seemed to help. The more I tinkered with the settings, the deeper I sank into the quagmire.
Following Claude's advice, I switched my browser to local settings. But then a new problem appeared: switching between accounts stopped working properly, and I couldn't even get my YouTube Premium account back. I honestly don't know how many days I spent wrestling with this mess.
I'd always thought of myself as a seasoned computer user — thirty years of experience — yet here I was, fumbling around like a complete beginner. Even Claude's answers weren't always clear.
After all that trial and error, I finally gave up trying to make do for free and decided to pay for Typeless. 23,720 yen a year — about 2,000 yen a month.
Clear Skies at Last
Today is October 2nd. The weather has finally cleared, and we have a perfect, cloudless sky.
After so many days of rain, the blue sky instantly lifted my spirits. It made me realize just how deeply the weather can affect our mood.
I'll reset my mind, little by little, and start moving forward again, one step at a time.
First, no matter what, I have to finish the rice harvest.