My Work Year in Review

As I sit here typing this on December 31, ostensibly a holiday, I suddenly realize that it might be depressing to be talking about work. At the same time, I both love my job AND don’t honestly work that much (weekdays, 9-3, lots of days out for location visits, interviews, etc.). So, I’m not too fussed about it. I get plenty of time to mess around.

So, anyway, here is my 2024 working year in numbers:

Rough number of Japanese characters translated: 645,000
- (Rough because some projects were more package-based than character based, and one novel overlapped New Year.)
Articles written: 15 (12 in Japanese)
Translation proposal packages written for publishers/rights agencies: 6
Novel translations completed: 3 (including the one that started in 2023)
Ceramic artists interviewed for book: 8

And none of that includes the hours spent taking pictures for books/articles, or reading for the job, or—most important of all!—the people I met. The numbers also don’t reflect the kind of seismic change that has happened in my work as I have become more plugged into the publishing industry. I’m now spending much less time on random corporate websites than I did last year (huzzah!) and more time with artists and creative people of all types. Again, Huzzah!

It has been a good year, professionally, and I think one that has sown the seeds for more good years to come. Fingers are crossed, wood is knocked on, salt is thrown over the shoulder, and every other good luck charm that might help it be so is invoked.

Personally, well, the world is what it is, but we’ve weathered things pretty well. I had a bad summer for a couple of reasons, but in general the Rion family in Japan has been blessed with pretty decent luck. I hope that 2025 is better, but I’d settle for roughly the same.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a lovely New Year, and wish you the best in 2025. To finish up, I am indeed curious. How were things for you in 2024?

The Jason Ogg Theory of Luck

I’m a lucky guy, all in all. Bad things have happened in my life, but I’ve made it through them more or less intact. I have a loving, healthy family. A career that is basically ideal. And through it all, I’ve been able to experience the world in ways I never dreamed of.

I sometimes feel like I’m so lucky it’s kind of scary. Because luck can turn on you in an instant, can’t it? All this can disappear like a tears in the rain (IYKYN). That thought has haunted me in a very real way, and I think I’ve developed a weird psychological tick because of it.

The thing that made me understand my own way of interacting with life’s vicissitudes was a bit in one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, about the blacksmith Jason Ogg. Because of the fundamental importance of a skilled blacksmith, and the magical nature of the Discworld, Jason Ogg can shoe anything. Donkeys, unicorns, even Death’s pale horse. But to have the power to shoe anything that comes to you for shoeing, you have to shoe anything that comes. If Death comes to you to shoe his horse, you shoe his horse. If your drunk friends bring an ant for shoeing as a joke, you shoe the ant. If you deny the request to use a power, you lose the power.

A blessing must be used, or you lose it. That is how I have come to interact with what I view as my luck. In practical terms, that means that if a chance that seems “lucky” comes along, I take it.

When someone emailed me years ago asking if I was interested in coming to Japan to teach English, I wasn’t, actually. But it seemed like a lucky chance, so I took it. And now I have lived in Japan, happily, for two decades.

When my barber asked if I wanted to go out to dinner with him and his niece, whom I had never met, I went. I married his niece a year later.

When my wife and I went for a walk one day in the neighborhood and saw a house with a for sale sign in the window, we took a tour and made an offer that day because it felt perfect to me. We’ve lived in it for almost 11 years now, and never plan to move.

This tendency of mine, to say “yes” to pretty much every major opportunity that comes down the line has also guided my career. It’s how I survived the bankruptcy of the English school I first worked at, it’s how I became a semi-regular TV guest, and it’s now guiding my literary translation work.

As if to reinforce the idea, the lucky chances keep coming, and I’ve not had to say “no” to any yet. That idea, that I have not had to say no, is perhaps the other half of my theory of luck. Because, if you want to say yes to opportunities, you need to be able to take them. You need skills, flexibility, time, attitude… You need to be open and prepared. Which is why I study things almost constantly, because you never know when you’ll need to know, oh, trends in the Japanese mystery publishing industry.

Anyway. I was just thinking about this, because sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had said “no” to some of the things that have come along. But all in all, I’m glad I didn’t.

Getting Used to Time in the Spotlight

I started out as a small-pond/big-fish kind of guy. I grew up in a the country and was an academic achiever at an early age, so I would end up in the local paper for some kind of academic award every once in a while. But growing up in a small town, even in the larger network of small towns that make up rural communities, means everyone knows you anyway. So the little bit of notoriety I had was nothing to brag about.

Even that much was short lived. When I went on to university, of course, the pond got much bigger and so did the other fish. I faded into the background, and that was all right with me. I did my thing, writing and teaching and so on, and ended up eventually becoming a translator: the ultimate invisible man. The rare work that I could put my name on was still so niche as to be almost unknown. I just kept on working in the shadows of my office/cave.

That lasted pretty much until this year. This year, I am not only publishing my own book, Discovering Yamaguchi Sake, but I’m putting out a translation of a Seishi Yokomizo Mystery, The Devil’s Flute Murders, from Pushkin Press. The first is a big deal for me personally, the second is just a plain old BIG DEAL. And so people are starting to notice me.

I’m being interviewed on podcasts. Asked to do online events. Planning book signing parties and presentations about my career. Emotionally, I’m in this totally new spot where my ego is tickled pink but my anxiety is headed through the roof, and I’m just bouncing between them like a ping pong ball. It’s not something I’m used to, and I am very tempted to just shout to the heavens “What have I done?!”

But I asked for this. I pursued these projects and enjoyed doing them. I never really stopped to think about what it would mean to do so, but I did it and now I suppose I need to learn to enjoy this tiny taste of attention.

Does anyone have any tips on how to do that without having an anxiety attack?