Bad Bosses Blame Their Employees for Mismanaged Workplaces

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A while back, I worked at a Day Job that was really, really busy.  While I was there the workload went up exponentially, though we only had a small increase in staff.  That meant we had slightly more people doing a LOT more work, which meant way more work for all of us.

During that extremely busy time, my boss dealt with the situation by checking in that we were constantly on task and not goofing off.  “Utilize your time well,” was her favorite phrase (complete with pretentious use of the word “utilize”), and she repeated it over and over at meetings.

Years later at a different Day Job, I experienced something similar.  At this particular Day Job I was responsible for waaaaaaaaaaay more work than a reasonable person could do in a 40-hour workweek, which led to a lot of stress and confusion.  To make matters worse, my boss often expected me to be in two places at once, and would regularly add extra tasks on to my already enormous workload.

This time, I tried explaining to my boss that there was simply too much work to do.  However, when I did, he always pivoted and said that I needed to manage my work better, stop wasting time, and learn to prioritize.  Continue reading »

Do You Treat Your Creative Work Like a Business?

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I talk a lot about “creative work” on this blog, but what does that really mean?  I guess I can loosely describe it as “anything that has to do with making things or getting those things out into the world.”

In that sense, for me as a writer, creative work would be…

That’s just the actual creative part, though.  There’s also:

The things on the first list are purely about creation: the act of making art Continue reading »

I Used to Lie During Job Interviews: Here’s Why

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The other day I was updating my CV in preparation for a part-time gig I picked up through word-of mouth.  In the opening section I wanted to summarize the work I do, and after some trial and error, I came up with this:

I’m a working fiction writer and editor/writing coach with experience in EFL (English as a Foreign Language). My teaching experience extends to Japan and across cultures, while my editing work extends across both fiction and academic scholarship.

When I think about the work I’ve done, and the work I’d like to be doing in the future, this statement feels really natural to me—as in, it sums up my experience accurately, and isn’t just an exaggerated image I put down so I can get jobs.

That got me thinking more about previous years, when every time I wrote a resume or went to a job interview, I tried to craft an image of myself that the company wanted to hear.

In short: I used to lie about myself and my career goals. Continue reading »

Finding Meaning in a Day Job, Career, or Creative Work

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Having a meaningful life is pretty important.

Think about it: If your life isn’t exciting, interesting, stimulating, fun, important, influential, or engrossing, what else is there to look forward to?  Mindless consumption of entertainment?  Repetitive chores and routines?  The empty pursuit of money and material wealth?  Those don’t sound very good to me.

People, I’ve found, find meaning in all kinds of ways.  Many find meaning in family relationships: finding a romantic partner, having kids, raising their own family, or connecting with parents, siblings, or other close relatives.  Society places a lot of value on family too, like how the nuclear family is super important in the West.

A lot of people grow up with the impression that family and romantic relationships are the best way to make a meaningful life (i.e., that family is the most important thing).  As such, many people have the impression that careers and paid work are only important in that they allow you to provide for a family.  In other words: Continue reading »

May 2022 Novel Update: Outlining —–> Drafting

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It’s been a really good month for novel drafting.  But first, a quick rewind….

Since January 2021 I’ve been working on a Secret New Novel Draft that I’ve wanted to start for literally years.  I knew this novel was going to be big—and for a while, I thought it might be too big.  As in, I wasn’t sure if I could do it.

As such, I tried taking time to research and plan the novel first…which didn’t go well, since my research wasn’t focused and much of the story seemed to exist in a murky haze.  I needed to write the story so I’d know what to research, but I also needed to research to write the story.  Augh!!!

So, I decided to jump right into a rough draft and see where it took me with the seat-of-your pants method of writing.  (Writers who do this are commonly called Pantsers, a name I find somewhat ridiculous…)  This allowed me to move forward, and helped me get quite a ways into the draft. Continue reading »

Freeing Up Your Mental Space is REALLY Important for Creativity

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Sometimes I get burned out or depressed—and when that happens, it’s a whole lot harder to work on a creative project.

I talked about this at length last fall, when a towering workload at my Japanese university job combined with a ninety-minute commute and having to check the final formatting on MFA Thesis Novel left me feeling overwhelmed, constantly pushing myself to the limit, and crashing hard on the weekends when I wanted to work on my secret new novel project.

All told, I felt overwhelmed and too damned busy.

I’ve written about the double downsides of being busy before: the first one’s obvious, but the second one’s something we often forget:
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I Made a Kick-Ass New Website!!! (and Here’s Why!)

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(I mean, a kick-ass new website besides this one, of course ;-)

ianmrogersauthor.com has been online for a few weeks, first in a “Coming Soon!” capacity, but more recently in more substantial form as I added pages and links.  I’m really happy with how it’s come out, people seem to like it, and I can always go back and makes changes later.

I wanted the new author website to have a cleaner, sleeker feel than But I Also Have a Day Job (which I intentionally designed to look like a blog from the late 2000s) and be easier to navigate, ESPECIALLY on a phone.  The plan is to keep the new website as a separate entity from BIAHADJ (which I assure you isn’t going anywhere!) as a way of highlighting both MFA Thesis Novel and my editing work (which I’m doing more of now!).

When people who don’t know me look me up, I’d like the new website to make a better first impression and be a bit cleaner around the edges while still retaining my intentional overuse of words like “awesome” and “totally.”

I also wrote a short humor piece especially for the website: Imaginary Hate Mail I’ve Received About MFA Thesis Novel.  I wanted a fun, absurd piece that was a spin-off of the novel Continue reading »

April 2022 Novel Update: My Writing Hiatus is Almost Over…

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As many of you know, it has NOT been a good few months for writing…

When I last checked in on my novel progress back in November, I was facing an avalanche of pressures at my university teaching job in Japan, not to mention a busy few weeks working with Vine Leaves Press getting MFA Thesis Novel ready for publication.  For all of November to December I felt overworked, exhausted, and in a disconnected state of mind.

Then in January and February I spent a LOT of time prepping for my big move from Japan back to the States—mailing boxes home, cleaning out my apartment, and doing a whole lot of packing…which then turned into a whole lot of unpacking, plus dealing with jet lag and social readjustment when I got back to New Hampshire.

March and April, meanwhile, were REALLY big months for MFA Thesis Novel as I set up the pre-order and prepared for the novel launch.  This was a HUGE project Continue reading »

Patience and the Long Game are REALLY Important for Creative Careers

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Whenever I hear the phrase “Be patient!” I think of The Empire Strikes Back when Yoda and Obi Wan are talking about Luke’s training:

Luke: We’re wasting our time!

Yoda: [looking away] I cannot teach him. The boy has no patience

Obi-Wan’s Voice: He will learn patience.

It’s crazy to think that these lines were written over forty years ago, when my parents’ generation was young, before the internet, Twitter, streaming television, or Amazon two-day delivery.  Instant gratification, it seems, has been a staple of youth for a long time—even in a galaxy far, far away.
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Does Getting Enough Sleep Every Night Help You Stay Focused?

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Yes, yes it does.

I’ve been back from Japan for nearly two months now (!), and I’ve been getting adjusted to my Self-Directed Work Schedule, where instead of having a Day Job, I plan my own time and work on my own projects at my own pace.  As of now, my main focus has been preparing for the release of MFA Thesis Novel, working on my freelance editing jobs with different clients, and getting back into a writing groove with my new novel, which has been unfortunately stalled for the past few months (. . .).

One of my big worries about not having the structure of a Day Job to guide me through the week was that working from home without external motivation would cause me to get distracted, start feeling like my work wasn’t taking me anywhere, or even get depressed.
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Reverse Culture Shock and Thoughts on Being Back in the US

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In case you didn’t know, reverse culture shock is definitely a thing.

I’ve been back in New Hampshire for just over a week after being delayed by a winter storm that swept through the Northeast the day of my flight.  Fortunately the good folks at Japan Airlines cancelled the flight two days in advance and put me on a new one leaving two days later, so I had plenty of time to assemble a backup plan.

Even more fortunate was that when I promptly emailed my contact at my company to let them know what happened, they let me stay in my company-leased apartment rent-free (!) for an extra two days.  (Moral of the story: Stay on good terms with the people in your company who can help you!)
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The Stable Life vs. The Creative Life

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In my English courses with Japanese students we discuss a variety of topics.  A few weeks ago I posed them a question I was genuinely curious about: What is your Dream Job?

Part of why I like teaching abroad is that it gives me an insight into another culture and how Japanese people think, which in turn helps me understand my own culture.  I had no idea what kind of dream job a bunch of twenty-year-old Japanese English majors might have.  Teacher?  Hotel clerk?  Translator?  Lawyer?  Generic office worker with an important-sounding job title?

The notion of knowing your dream job is interesting to me because it implies that you have some passion for something you really want to do.  My dream job, of course, is being a full-time novelist, though when I was twenty I don’t think I really understood that yet.  Maybe when you were twenty years old you had a job you wanted to do more than any other, or maybe now you still have a job you’re aspiring to—don’t give up yet!

Anyway, I posed the dream job question several times Continue reading »