窓越し

The worst of the wildlife wears clothes and can pray meagan/twentytwo/INFJ/人見知り コーヒー依存 うまく届かないんだ。 either in australia or japan.

[novelocean]

my life as an adult this week: neverending company regulation translations, subtitling japanese tv shows, designing an english-language curriculum in japanese, organizing medical and acting workshop interpreting jobs, correcting english assignments from students, editing textbooks, setting up new professional networks etc.

needless to say i’m working overtime every day.

[novelocean]

life of a freelancer: working from home and enjoying the flexibility/freedom, but also looking at full time job ads during the day because i miss stability and human interaction

no one wins.

[novelocean]

words, translation, words

i love words, i love expression

i can’t believe i’m translating a fucking thesis and thinking this

i’m such a boring person

with the best anti-social job

working from a kotatsu

[novelocean]

things i have learnt this year:

i value family more than anything.

i can live a reclusive life with my partner and never talk to anyone

my body isn’t as strong as i thought it was

[novelocean]

having become an adult, i now understand that the point of life is to district yourself with insignificant but interesting things that you can invest time and money in, like enjoying and comparing expensive wines and the secret to steaming milk perfectly for a latte at home.

it’s strange how the other side of mirror changes when you’re a part of it.

[novelocean]

the tax office is coming after me for $4000 for the stupidest reason ever, and they won’t drop it. it’s so frustrating.

[novelocean]

i’ve been drowning work recently. i’ve been so busy working from home that my partner took yesterday off to cook me breakfast and clean the entire fucking house. things are interesting. jobs from the last week include my wonderful textbook (it never ends but the first volume is done, 65 pages or so), translations about infrastructure investment projects overseas, RPG translation, development project for an urban green space, product and company information for prospective exporters, legal terms and conditions for a baseball championship, tourism website, and another silly game translation. i’m also translating correspondence for my partner’s father, who’s currently working overseas and struggling with all the blatant rule-violations that are going on.

anyway i’m tired. too many deadlines and too little relaxation.

how do adults live?

[novelocean]

[novelocean]

Instagram post by PAVILIONSURF&LODGE • Oct 12, 2017 at 5:25am UTC

i spent a few days in shikoku this week, surfing and on the SUP, bbq’ing and having happy hour on that terrace. i got up for the sunrise every morning, made brunch after a morning surf/SUP, and was terrified by the huge surf and the stupid bollards that ruin shishikui.

anyway, you can’t tell, but i’d lost my voice and could barely speak. photos are deceiving. i now have a fully fledged cold and i’m home-ridden. my textbook has its first deadline on monday, so i have to submit volume one of six. fifty-odd pages. in japanese. about english grammar. what is my life.

[novelocean]

i’m writing a textbook about how to write concise and easy to understand english (in japanese, because it’s boring to do things in your first language) for an online seminar that i’m creating and oh my god, i feel like i’m making up all the grammar rules in the world for changing prepositional phrases into regular noun phrases and i kind of want to kill myself

[novelocean]

in a professional sense, things are coming together

i’m starting to form some kind of semblance of a career (or at least, steady work/promising interviews/promising agencies/impressive qualifications). more responsibilities. more freedom.

i won’t be able to live luxuriously, but i’m paying for that with total freedom and the fact that i don’t even leave my house most days

[novelocean]

a scene that remains so vivid in my mind, replaying every day

last week, thursday night. midnight. we were camping in the tokushima/kochi area at a campground near the ocean. we’d been having a bbq outside but then a torrential downpour took over, so we evacuated to the tent. the rain stopped around midnight, and lightning started up.

lightning i’d never seen anything like before. it was heat lightning, over the ocean, and it went for about an hour. constant lightning, from the exact same place. refusing to move, refusing to stop. it lit up the tent so brightly.

we needed to go to the toilet, so we got out of the tent around 12.30. it was midnight and silent, and our tent was pitched in an almost empty field. water was rushing down the path around us. the lightning was so dazzling and it wouldn’t stop. constant lightning, spearing the exact same place, from the exact same part of the sky over the ocean. there were barely any trees around. we were so defenseless and conspicuous in that field. i was terrified the whole way to the toilet and back. it was so silent, but the silence was so loud. i usually love storms and lightning, but i’d only heard that afternoon that this area was a lightning hotspot. so of course i was fucking terrified. the toilet was so far away, the lightning was like nothing i’d seen before.

it lasted for about an hour, relentless lightning that refused to move.

the next morning, i looked up information about lightning strikes in the area. thirty years ago, at the surf beach where we set up camp every day, lightning struck the water. six surfers died, six were seriously injured. fuck.

[novelocean]

so.

i passed the accreditation exams for interpreting and translation (against horrible odds, might i add)

it’s a monday night but my parents and i finished off a bottle of sparkling to celebrate

and...

then i opened another bottle of wine and went back to work because i’m an adult with responsibilities

i don’t know. it doesn’t feel real. i’ve been working towards these qualifications for two years now. and it’s ... over. i’ve succeeded in what i came back to melbourne for. time to go back to japan, i suppose.

in the meantime, i’ll have to deal with everyone else around me failing.

it’s hard to celebrate when you’re the only one.

[novelocean]

business courtesy 101: confirm receipt of emails/files.

seriously.

is it that hard?

[novelocean]

it’s strange, the feeling of having an exam and feeling like you did quite well... but still knowing that you’ve most likely failed.

i feel like interpreting is a wall that you can never break through, regardless of how much you try.

maybe this accreditation is just an impossible feat.

i’m not used to losing.

[novelocean]

everyone tells me to do things at my own pace, but everyone around me is getting married and having babies and buying land and building houses and working nine to five and saving money and being “adults” and here i am with absolutely nothing to show for myself but an utter lack of knowledge about how the real world works and no concrete plans for the future

i just wanted to be free, but now i’m starting to get a bit lonely from the isolation

[novelocean]

i can’t help but get swept up in the tide of interpreting exams, translation work, english teaching, future prospects and investing money for the future. coming back to melbourne kind of overwhelms me, the harsh dimness of reality causing me to toss and turn at night, but not really achieve any semblance of sleep at all

you know, i slept so well in japan.