I am in a pickle once again.
The economic situation around the world hasn’t left me untouched. I have slowly built up a student base over the years in order to earn enough money to live. But with the economic situation, fewer and fewer people are thinking about taking English classes. Those who do are usually on a budget.
It feels as if every time I start to grow my base, the water comes in and pulls some people away.
The fact is, advertising seems to have nearly no reliable results these day. Word of mouth is way more effective but even word of mouth seems to be drying up these days. 4 students have expressed their desire to help me and had a couple leads, friends who want to take my class, but out of the 8 or 9 leads, only one of them actually took a trial.
I’ve noticed that many students are being pressured by their companies to work more overtime hours. Japan was finally starting to chill out with all the overtime work but many of their companies are struggling and the work environment is becoming more competitive.
Since companies in Japan are legally not allowed to fire people unless they’ve done something horrible and there is evidence or the company is officially in the process of downsizing, they use various other tactics to encourage people to quit. Managers bully employees in subtle ways that can’t be proven as bullying, and try to tire employees out so they’ll quit.
I notice a student or two being bullied more and two who are doing fine have told me they narrowly escaped corporate reatructuring.
I was doing so much better last year the the previous teo years but since I am now out of the lowest tax bracket, and need to stay there in order to ensure a long term visa next time, my taxes have been killing me. Right now I would be doing much better if I made LESS money because then my taxes and insurance would’t have hit me so hard, but then I wouldn’t have recieved a 3 year visa. 🙄
Most people would have put their tail between their legs and sought out whatever kind of employement they could find, no matter the time and energy it cost them. Some would aggressively start lowering their prices and trying to work more or trying to appeal to people through whatever menas neccisary.
I am not these people though. I know i have much much more to give and I know that struggling to survive is not how I give it. I know things can turn around in a moment and I know that in order to live a life that reflects your dreams you need to be willing to take chances and be rock solid in your convictions.
It doesn’t mean I will not work hard or just wait around for something good to happen.
Instead of panicing I keep thinking, what do I have to offer that I WANT to give.
I realized I still want to help my favorite artists and people in my community succeed and started thinking about ways to bring them up.
I started thinking about some friends who are opening pop-up shops and are also struggling. I thought maybe I could offer to be an assistant for some of them and in the process help them with spreading the word.
I could have done this a long time ago but I thought I needed to focus on finding my own students first. Now i am starting to think I had it backwards. Maybe this is how I find my students. Maybe I will find other opportunities. The more money going around in my community, the better for all of us, so even if I earn less per hour working with them, it may be beneficial to all of us.
Rather than get stingy with my time, I am trying to be even more giving. Rather than contract, I want to expand.
And if things don’t work out I am powering down a bit of hive and leo just in case I need a month or two of leeway to get things moving.
I was listening to lyrics by one of my new favorite bands and while they are doing pretty well on their own I felt their lyrics were very powerful and the English translations on their bandcamp weren’t really clear, so I decided to go over the Japanese and edit the translation.
I want to send the edits to the band.
It’s hard not to hope this will lead to some personal benefit just because I am struggling a bit right now, but even if it doesn’t I have no hard feelings! I love these songs and would be happy just to share then with more friends and help them reach more people!
Whatever will help me become more of the person I want to be, that’s what I want to focus on, and I am ready to do the work.
I am going to spend the next month preparing some music to play some shows. I don’t have huge expectations but that could potentially bring in a tiny bit of extra income as well.
Part of what is wrong with society now is that all the enrgy goes into the wrong channels. Rather than working for the benefit of everyone, starting with themselves, people tend to work tirelessly for people above them in exchange for some semblence of stability. But that stability is not thriving and it costs more and more as power becomes more and more centralized.
We can take back our power by working for ourselves and the people we care about. Obviously i will only give what I can afford to give, but since my main work requires customers and isn’t something that just more focus and time will resolve, sitting and thinking about how hard things are and trying the same things over and over or giving energy to algorithms which would encourage me to become something I am not are a waste of that energy. Helping people around me and sharing the benefits is not.
日本に住むの一番慣れないところ The hardest thing to get used to in Japan
