I Paid Off ALL My Student Loans!!!* (with an asterisk)

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Happy New Year everybody—I’m feeling rejuvenated after my vacation and ready to take on a whole new set of challenges for 2019.  Hope you’re feeling the same way.

I also reached a big, BIG milestone, as implied by the title: last month, after making my first wire transfer of money back from Japan, I paid off the very last $3,400 of my very last student loan.  At 5.8%, that final loan was costing me $16 bucks a month in interest, but moreso than the monthly savings is knowing that I’m now COMPLETELY FREE OF INTEREST-ACCUMULATING DEBT, which just feels all kinds of awesome.

It was hard to describe the feeling of pure freedom I experienced when I clicked Send on that last payment, Continue reading »

Here’s What I’m Working On Right Now

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A lot’s changed in the past six months—the most glaring thing being that I LIVE IN JAPAN NOW so my routine’s changed a lot from what I was used to back in the States.

On a grander scale, though, the landscape of how I’m spending my time and which goals I’m pursuing is also different—not because my goals have changed, but because I’ve made some decent progress in the past few months in crossing bigger projects off my To-Do list, and that feels pretty good.

So without further ado, here’s an up-to-date list of which goals I’m pursuing right now, in approximate order of importance: Continue reading »

Guest Reflection – 3 New Developments a Day

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So two weeks ago I posted about making good use of your time and the challenges that go along with it, which a lot of folks seemed to appreciate.  (A sign that maybe we’re all struggling with the same problems??)

One of those folks happened to be my old board-game playing cohort Darryl Parker, web designer and self-employed entrepreneur who opened up Schoodac’s coffee shop in my hometown of Warner, New Hampshire back in 2015.  He wrote some wise words down in the depths of the comments section about how he manages his time, and I found it way too thought-provoking not to share as its own post: Continue reading »

Why I Blog About My Shortcomings

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A few weeks back I was talking to a friend about this blog, and he summed up the entire thing like this:

“It seems like you’re always talking about some problem you’re going through, and how as soon as you’ve dealt with it you’re FINALLY going to get some work done for serious this time.”

As usual I’m exaggerating, but his point was basically the same: I often sound like a procrastinator who’s vowing to finally get down to work as soon as the latest distraction is out of the way.  Especially in the wake of my last post about kicking bad habits in Japan, I’ve been thinking: have I fallen into a pattern of letting one distraction after another interfere with my work?

Here’s an even crazier thought: have I fallen into a pattern of blogging about these same distractions so that everybody can see how inefficient and easily distracted I am?

To supplement my point, here’s a list of distractions and difficulties I’ve written about since I started this blog: Continue reading »

Does Your Job Make You Censor Yourself?

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  • Have you ever wanted to post online about something you were involved in but were afraid of how your job would react?
  • Have you ever kept a creative project secret from your coworkers even if you could openly talk about it with everyone else?
  • Do you worry that some aspect of your life outside of work clashes with your at-work persona in ways that could potentially cause a BIG problem?

All of these are feelings I’ve dealt with, and they’re a big deal. Continue reading »

Last Post in America! (For a While, Anyway)

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It’s been a CRAZY few weeks since July started and I realized I had LESS THAN A MONTH before Japan to pack up my entire apartment and finish the novel and cancel all my utilities AND finish up a bunch of miscellaneous writing projects AND bring my Japanese up to par—so yeah, I’ve been pretty busy.

Having so much to do has partly been good, since it’s kept me insanely focused most days and pushed me to get more done…though the downside is that it’s also causing me a lot of stress and led to a lot of mad scrambling as I second-guess myself about what needs to be done and in which order.

So with a week before my flight, here’s a report card-style progress report of Continue reading »

My Weeklong Return to Online Test-Grading and Why It Still SUCKS

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So last week I briefly mentioned that I’d signed on to a week (five and a half days, to be exact) at my old Secret Work-From-Home Day Job grading standardized test essays.  The chance to pick up extra hours arrived conveniently in my inbox six or so weeks ago because I’m still on the company’s mailing list, and at the time I figured, what the hell—I could always use the extra cash, and a week of test-grading wouldn’t set me too far behind, right?

*Cue ominous music here* Continue reading »

Self-Pacing and Breaks are REALLY Important

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This is one of those entries where I talk about something that happened to me, then relate it to a larger phenomenon so that you, the reader, can have something to reflect on too.  Here’s the story:

Yesterday I vowed to finish retyping the edits to the fourth draft of my novel, which I’d been working on slowly over the past two weeks but wanted to finish ASAP in line with my self-imposed deadline of finishing the fifth draft by July 1st.  However, accomplishing this mighty goal involved me typing out 140 pages worth of edits (give or take) in the 7 hours I’d set aside.

The math worked out to about 20 pages per hour.  Challenge accepted. Continue reading »

There’s No Google Maps for the Creative Life

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The other day I was meeting with my local writer’s group (small plug for them here), and afterward a younger guy who was finishing a creative writing MFA came up to me.  He was new to the group and had a lot of good ideas, and that night he had a deliberate look in his eyes and an important question he very badly wanted to ask:

“So, what did you do, like, for a job after you graduated?”

The question caught me off guard because it had been so long since anyone asked me that.  It brought me back to when I was twenty-two and my friends and I Continue reading »

My Biggest Weakness Explained (And Why You Should Know Yours!)

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If you’d asked me two years ago to name the biggest factor stopping me from getting my creative work done, I would have hands-down said overuse of social media: I used to spend WAY too much time on Facebook (ugh…) and scrolling through Twitter hoping for that gambler’s jackpot payout of finding something awesome that keeps us all hooked.

Now I use social media a lot less and usually only pull it up at set times of the day, so that doesn’t feel like a problem anymore.

Then if you’d asked me last year about my biggest weakness I would have said lethargic time wasting: sleeping too much, getting distracted between tasks, and taking long breaks when I didn’t really need them.  I stopped doing these things in part Continue reading »

May Novel Update: Draft 4 Complete!!!

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Amazing how quickly the tables can turn.

My April novel update consisted mostly of a depressed lament about how little I’d gotten done not only in the past month, but the past year—it took me almost nine months to completely finish the third draft of this novel after I went back to full-time Day Job work, and the fourth draft was progressing just as slowly.

Now, though, things are different: two weeks ago I made the final edits to the fourth draft, after working on it every weekday since I left my Day Job.  That means it only took 16 working days (chunks of two and a half to four hours from late morning to early afternoon) to finish the last 275 pages Continue reading »

Money Leads to Freedom

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(TLDR Version: Money gives you the freedom to make the changes you want in life.)

I haven’t been to any kind of Day Job in over a month…and it feels AWESOME.  Instead I’ve been editing the fourth draft of my novel, studying Japanese, working on this blog, finishing a handful of other writing projects, and taking on a few editing projects, which combined total more than a full-time job while paying decidedly less than full-time money.  I’m able to do this chiefly for two reasons:

  1. I saved up a bunch of money (six months worth of living wages, to be exact) before I left my Day Job
  2. I have more income lined up for mid-summer when I leave for my teaching job in Japan

Both the income safety net and the upcoming job make it possible Continue reading »