I’m big in Japan

I always thought that changing your art or your business just to attract more people was akin to selling out. Then Hive happened and I realized there are so many versions of myself worth sharing. I don’t have to fake anything. I can pick the most fitting me for any particular medium and share different things in different mediums.

I came here to share fiction but I found that blogging garnered some readers and sharing thoughts and ideas was something I always wanted to do anyway so I stopped sharing fiction here.

I’m still writing fiction btw, I’m just sharing it on Amazon and all that and waiting until I find a good way to promote it.

I got on Twitter for the same reason, to promote my music and fiction and work in a way that I couldn’t do at hive but I’m finding a new self to share there.

For the past few months I’ve been finding people I can get along with and have fun with and trying to avoid the dark side of twitter by all means necessary. As someone who lives in Japan, that’s led me to a lot of Japanese/English bilinguals and language students. It’s nice to connect there because honestly I don’t have many close Japanese friends these days. I do have a few but I barely see them and they are all busy, and with work related friends (students mostly) I’m still learning to let my guard down and be myself so it’s nice to connect with more people who are here in Japan and feel more connected to the place I live, even if I have yet to meet any of these people in person.

Yesterday I made a little video of myself speaking Japanese and from the overwhelming response I realized that perhaps I have more reason to cater my Twitter to Japanese speakers and japanese learners entirely.

I will not cater in the sense of trying to change myself for them. I will just focus on the parts that will be fun to share with these particular people.

I won’t make it extra work. I’m already putting all kinds of knowledge and valuable experiences into my writing and music and teaching, I don’t want to drain myself. I’ll just start speaking Japanese more and if I lose the chance to connect with new monolingual English speakers on Twitter, that’s ok. I can already engage on Hive and through my music and writing. The point of joining twitter was to reach new people and if those people happen to be Japaneae…well, I can speak Japanese!

The Twitter algorithms can fuck you any moment and don’t show you to outside whichever echo chamber they place you in anyway. So if they’ve placed me with Japanese/English speakers, I can work with that, that’s actually fantastic.

I’m thinking about turning it into a daily study routine. I am too busy to do much study but speaking a little bit every week on video will give me an opportunity to review exactly what I don’t know how to say so I can find the correct expression and learn.

Maybe it’ll make it easier to build up the Hive JP community again 🥸🙃😆

Anyways, we will see what happens. Twitter is just a big experiment to me. If I make a few extra friends that’s enough.

🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎