Well, an entire year has come and gone since our triumphant return from Japan. An entire year filled with weddings, receptions (including our second one), more parties, jobs, a new home, traveling around the area, and more. We’ve had a lot of fun and been pretty busy working too, but it hasn’t made us miss Japan any less. It still feels like I could return to our small apartment there any time and it would be exactly as we left it. I don’t regret coming back to the states, back to a completely different lifestyle, but Japan was awesome and I miss our friends. Come visit us!!
The single most difficult thing about being back has been to successfully commit to new iron-clad goals. Don’t get me wrong – things have gotten done and we’ve accomplished a lot (like finding jobs and buying a home, for starters), but unlike how “learn Japanese in Japan” was my dream that I’d had for a long time and was finally achieving, I’ve lost that extra “passion hobby” that I can call my own here. I’m still practicing Japanese, but the dream has fallen away to the fact that I’m here looking for some way to make some money, challenge myself, grow as an individual, and path the way for my family’s future. Which leads to the biggest question: what do I do with my life?
Yeah yeah, I know. I’ve already given you a schpeal about wanting to go into psychology to help people achieve their dreams. Psychology has loosely been my plan since college, when I figured that the variety in my clients’ cases in addition to the ever-changing field of psychology would make it interesting enough to be an entertaining career. But even with variety, even with it being “interesting,” if it doesn’t inspire passion or excitement how are you going to push yourself over the inevitable obstacles along the way? Becoming a psychologist requires a doctorate, which means 5-7 more years of schools, which in turn necessitates a lot of commitment and determination up front even before researching graduate programs and school applications.
So despite having already taken the GRE and Psychology subject test (both of which don’t expire until 2016), my lack of sincere passion at the moment has led me to table the idea for now and consider my other options.
- Continue with my current job or find another one that’s a typical 9-5 grind.
- Be more aggressive in finding translation work (my current company hasn’t given me anything in the three months I’ve been registered with them).
- Start a business that I can run from home.
All three options primarily focus on making money first and foremost to support my awesome wife and me. But they differ in how they challenge me, allow for growth, and prepare for future endeavors.
The first option, the “normal job” route, would leave me exactly where I am right now – not really growing in any particular way, which frustrates me to no end. I’m used to honing in on productive habits and exploiting them, but this current position is limited in its workload and seems to encourage busy work to fill up the free time. There is no deeper meaning to the job apart from supporting someone else’s business plans aimed toward customer hospitality, and I’ve found that in general being paid hourly is not very motivating in getting people to work more effectively and efficiently to their full potential. If I get another similar just-for-income job, who’s to say I won’t fall into the same issues?
After a lot of thought, initially prompted while reading The 4 Hour Workweek, I think the business option would actually contribute to an ideal lifestyle. I love the idea of using automated small businesses to not only generate money, but time – time that we could use to travel and focus on goals that wouldn’t have to be based on a single career or job, but a life skill. Like Japanese. Japanese was a fantastic goal because I was able to have fun the whole way through AND decide to continue or leave it as I wish, though preferably at the definitive end point (10,000 collected sentences, aka “I know Japanese”). This option would allow me to build up languages and other skills that would open doors and give me the ability to do so much more than my current limited experiences could ever do. Plus I would be traveling the world at a younger age rather than waiting and saving for retirement. I could go into a lot of detail on this option, but I will save it for a later post.
Which leaves me with the translation option. Like I mentioned briefly, I got my foot in the door once and I can do it again. This time, however, I’ll be planning on being hired by multiple companies so that at least one will be giving me work at any given time. This will allow me the freedom to work from my computer (wherever that may be) and to self-manage my time which, it turns out, keeps me the most productive.
With that said, let’s finalize my targets for the foreseeable future.
Current goal: Freelance Translator (time < 2 months)
-Daily actionable sub-goal: Practice translating and do fun stuff in Japanese
Researching: Business muses and personal development
Reading for fun: Psychology articles
I’m going to be doing some extensive reading, having recently bought 3 books and planning on reading at least 4 more specific books once I finish those. In order to stay on track and continue to grow, I’ll be inputting interesting ideas into Anki and reviewing on a daily basis. I will also keep note of my thoughts and progress at least once a week, and perhaps post them here from time to time.
My life in Japan as an egg has come to a close. A time for reflections and resolutions is upon us.
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