This is another rant along the lines of Learning Japanese, avoiding the burnout and keeping it fun. One of my more popular posts. Maybe I should burnout and rant more often…
I definitely take after by father when it comes to work and creating things. My dad has the nickname in our family of “Spirit-Level Pete”. Every time he does some DIY around the house he uses a spirit level to align everything correctly. Others would just hammer nails into wood and be happy. He also puts his all into his work and pretty much anything else he does. My Dad does the best possible job he can and he’s my inspiration, but perfectionism can be a burden.
It’s good because it’s what drives me to be better at what I do, but at the same time it holds me back because I feel my work needs to be perfect before being seen by others. I’m slowly learning that you don’t have to have something perfect before throwing it in front of people. I’m applying this not just to blogging but to everything else, such as JPop Japan and learning to speak Japanese. I still hadn’t broken the “what if I say it wrong?” doubts which kept me from using the Japanese I know.
So I’ve decided to take a more “do it and see” approach to everything, including blogging. I’m not going to brainstorm, write, and double check, re-write, re-brainstorm, triple-check and publish an article. If I think of an article idea I’ll write it, review it and publish it. I can update it and add to it at a later date if needed. Take this post for example. I wrote this last night. Reviewed it once this morning and published it.
My perfectionism also affects my Japanese learning. I thought I needed to learn the kanji first. That’s what alljapaneseallthetime.com suggests, and that’s the gist I got from other bloggers and forums. For my situation, and to be honest, for anyone learning Japanese, kanji is not the first thing you should be learning. Sure, you should learn it, but give it time, plenty of time. Say, 10 years or so.
The best thing you can do is to learn to speak Japanese and listen to Japanese people. Not in Japan? Get Skype. There’s plenty of Japanese people looking for language exchange. Alternatively, and I think probably easier to do is to sign up at eduFire. This is a freakin’ awesome resource and you’d be a fool to miss it.
Personally, I don’t need to use eduFire because the resource is here with me in Japan. I’m surrounded by Japanese all the time. However if I was back in the UK I would be using all of these great online tools such as eduFire and iKnow! My girlfriend can speak English and we could easily just speak English all the time, but she knows I want to learn Japanese. So she throws me in at the deep end now and again and only speaks to me in Japanese. Also, as I said in my previous rant I’m trying my best to just say the first Japanese response that comes to mind. More often than not it’s the right response.
I had an interview yesterday that really cemented this whole thing for me. I was introduced to the staff within the company and I could hardly communicate with them beyond “Nice to meet you”. Not great. I could’ve said a bit more at least, but I wasn’t 100% sure I was correct. I should’ve seized the moment and got the most out of it. Never mind, we live and learn. Next time I’ll be more prepared and more open to giving it a try. I just hope I can get some work with this company, they seem to be doing great things.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. You have comments enabled on your blog, right? Good, so when you have an article idea, write it up, take the jump and publish it. Write Japanese even. Anything. Just post it and see what the feedback is. Ignore the trolls, but listen to the comments and apply the feedback to your next post. Soon you’ll be posting regularly and it might even be perfect, or it might be a random mess that seems to attract attention. At least that’s what I’m going to try in 2009.
Photos by unloveable, modowd and trussmonkey
