Summary
Just wanted to say right off the bat that a lot of this resonates, oof. Sorry for the length of this comment, and for making it a little bit about myself at times .
For a long time, I really wanted to become a published author to make a living. Still do, honestly! But Iām increasingly unsure if Iāll ever be able to make that happen because the more I learn about the publishing industry, the more at odds I feel with it, and I feel like the only way I could publish books ethically would be to self-publish them outside the Amazon ecosystem, and to make them incredibly accessible, which isnāt exactly a great recipe for making enough money to live on. I think itās doable, but it would involve a lot of me forging my own path and hoping to get lucky.
Plus thereās the fact that my (undiagnosed) ADHD has gotten substantially worse during the pandemic because I think the constant stress has eroded my coping mechanisms and all of that. So writing (fiction and nonfiction) has become hard for me in a way that it wasnāt before. I do want to get back to it, and hope that I can, but for now, Iām a little bit in survival mode, so Iām sort of just letting my hyperfixations rule my life without trying to fight it. This is great for me learning languages and watching wrestling, and is very bad for me doing pretty much any other hobby .
I ended up getting a masterās in library science a few years ago for reasons that are a little complicated to explain (the immediate answer is ābecause of Star Trek fanzinesā ). Part of why I picked librarianship was because it was basically the only āregularā job I could envision myself doing, if the whole writing thing didnāt work out. I ended up learning a bunch of other stuff in grad school and getting most of an MFA in book arts by taking a bunch of extra credits on top of my library classes, because ultimately Iām someone who really, really loves making stuff, and I always gravitate toward learning new creative skills. Not really a great way to make a reliable living!
In any case, I completed my masterās degree, moved back home to live with my parents while I tried to get a job at a local library, didnāt have much luck, and then the pandemic happened. Yeah. Great time to be trying to go into a field that required a lot of in-person work. I did manage to get a job, thanks to someone in the field taking pity on me (I had a masterās degree with no job experience, which is a terrible combination if you want people to hire you).
My boss basically invented a position for me because she really wanted to hire someone with a degree, and itās 16 hours a week. Iāve found that this is about the sweet spot for me in terms of my ability to handle work without getting too burned out. I could probably do 20, but that is about my max. (My parents refer to my Japanese study and fan translation work as my second part time job, because truly between that and my real job, I easily work more than 40 hours a week )
Of course, I have zero benefits and no job security, butā¦ I canāt really complain other than that. It would be a great set-up in a world where I didnāt have to worry about paying for rent, food, or healthcare (thankfully, as long as I live with my parents, Iām largely covered, but thatās not a situation that can last forever, for a multitude of reasons). But America is not that world. So Iām trying to save all of the money that I can, and am trying to mentally prepare myself for the strong possibility of getting hired full time, which I am both wanting (for the sake of getting insurance plus an actual livable wage) and also dreading (because I truly donāt think I could handle the mental strain from that every single week, not to mention losing a substantial amount of time to do my hobbies and actually live my life).
And yeah, it sucks! Like I have it better than most, and it still sucks. What I really want is for the US to have universal healthcare along with some sort of universal basic income program that covers housing and food and such, so that I would have the ability to avoid having to work full time if I wanted to survive.
And honestly, actually working a real job and doing a bunch of volunteer and fan labor on the side has really revealed to me that the stuff society pays you for and the stuff that it doesnāt pay you for truly reflects neither the amount of work you actually put into something nor the societal benefit from that work. Like, starting in summer 2020, I started helping bring free food and supplies to migrant agriculture workers here during the picking season. Itās hard, exhausting work to load up all of the food and distribute it and then pack up the remainder and leave. How much do I get paid for that? Literally nothing. When I first got my job, I got paid $160 in wages to sit through hours and hours of zoom meetings, then I went out and did several hours of hard labor in 90 degree weather to literally directly improve dozens of peopleās life and got paid absolutely nothing. Really makes you question the value of work!
Iām also someone who has been creating fanworks and doing other sorts of fan labor for well over a decade now. I studied fan culture in both undergrad and grad school because it is such a passion of mine. Iāve written hundreds of thousands of words of fanfiction, which thousands upon thousands of people have read. Thatās far more readers than any of my original fiction work has gotten, thatās for sure! People have told me that my fics have made them laugh, or cry, or get through tough times, or find out something important about themselves, or just generally helped them in a myriad of ways.
At some point, it just occurred to me to wonder why do we as a society value the creation of original fiction so much more than fanfiction? I mean obviously the actual answer is that copyright law prevents fanfiction from having monetary value, but in terms of, like, art and the value of art as a thing in itself, there is no real distinction there. Fic authors invest so much time and love into their work, often as much or more than original fiction authors. And countless people are out there reading fic to get through hard times, just as theyāre reading original fiction to do the same. My work as a fic author has exactly the same value (in terms of what it offers to humanity, not monetary worth) as my original fiction work.
My fan translation work, too, and the gifs Iāve made for wrestling shows. Even though Iām technically doing work that benefits a company and gives them free promotion or whatever, I donāt want to get paid for that work. Thatās not why Iām doing it. Iām doing it because it makes me happy and makes other people happy, too. I would love to live in a world where I could write my fics and translate wrestling stuff all day and not have to worry about having to get stuff done in order to make rent. I think that kind of work that I do has a tangible positive benefit for others, and it improves peopleās lives.
And, yeah, just language learning in general is both a huge time suck and also something that is a pure net benefit for everyone! The more languages you speak, the more doors it opens in terms of cultural understanding and awareness. If we lived in a world that truly cared about the happiness and health of the global community and all of its inhabitants, people would be heavily encouraged and incentivized to learn languages.
Like, I think the amount of work youāre putting into Japanese is basically a full-time job. But because that work isnāt valued, you donāt earn a wage for doing it, and that makes it hard for many people to do it. If we had universal basic income, or something, I think lots of people would choose to spend their time doing stuff like learning languages, or making art (like video games as you mentioned). And the world as a whole would be better off, because all of that would create a more interesting and pleasant existence for the rest of us!
Not to, uh, go off about leftist stuff in the middle of your study log .
Getting back to the whole covid issue, yeah, I can relate to a lot of the mental strain aspects of the past few years, though I have been luckier as far as physical health goes. My health problems have been minor and seemingly covid-unrelatedā¦ Mental health, though, yeah, thatās a different story.
Itās really tough living in a world where I canāt really see my friends. My local friends are basically internet friends to me now. I was already someone who spends a lot of time interacting with people online, but now itās likeā¦ itās my whole world, basically. And I wasnāt fully prepared for the kind of mental toll that takes. It sucks because when the vaccines first came out, I thought we were on our way out of all of this, but then global vaccine inequality caught up to us, and wellā¦ We as a world are in this one together, and the world just doesnāt seem to care about ever actually fixing it. And yeah, the climate catastrophe stuff is probably my longest running anxiety, and that certainly hasnāt been helped in recent years, either.
Regarding Japanese, I think maybe it would help to find some way to sort of let go of efficiency as the main goal? Let yourself watch anime with English subs on, and read stuff without mining new words, that sort of thing. Take some time to enjoy the language without turning it into more work for yourself. It definitely sounds like a good idea to put a pause on adding new flash cards, or at least slow down heavily. Youāll get plenty of learning out of the stuff you already have in circulation, and youāll also keep learning even if you use methods that arenāt perfectly optimized.
If typing and gaming and such are hard because of your wrist problems, I wonder if maybe practicing speaking would be easier? You could theoretically do that without even needing to look at a screen. I know youāre not especially interested in learning to speak the language, but it might be one possible avenue to explore that you could do without running into as many health obstacles.
I donāt know how much any of this helps, but I just wanted to send some solidarity your way. I keep hoping weāll eventually be able to create a better world. The world keeps doing everything it can to test that hope, but I havenāt lost faith yet.