Author: Lauren Orsini

Home Author is Lauren Orsini (Page 3)

Otaku Journalist is 10 years old!

1 comment

Have you seen the new ad for anime on Disney Plus? “It’s not about being otaku, it’s about being… you.” Even now it is exhilarating to me to see this formerly obscure and misunderstood loan word used in a mainstream setting. Because when I launched Otaku Journalist on November 14, 2009, I had to explain what it meant every single time.

Though I’m mostly still quietly withdrawn from blogging in favor of snuggling my newborn daughter, I couldn’t let Otaku Journalist’s first decade pass without a word. 

If you’ve been around for a while, you know the whole story, and my sixth-anniversary post outlines those early years well: my journalism school professor strongly encouraged each of us to have our own domain name and portfolio website. I initially named it the eponymous LaurenRaeOrsini.com and tried to keep my content as general as possible in order to show my range and widen my appeal to the largest possible audience. Fast forward just a few months and I’d narrowed the scope to the topics I like best—with a name to match. 

At the time, “Otaku” was appealing to me not only because it was generally unclaimed among blog titles. It also seemed to express a more invested form of fandom. Today, mainstream discourse uses “otaku” and “fan” fairly interchangeably in English when discussing interest in anime and manga. The part about increased intensity has mostly disappeared. It’s been incredible to watch the language we use to talk about fandom evolve in real time. 

In a way, the passage of time has been the theme of my Otaku Journalist content this year. Obviously, it’s been a year of immense change for me as I prepared to meet my daughter. I wrote about returning to cosplay as a woman in my 30s and how I made sure not to be creepy while interacting with much younger cosplayers. I wrote about growing out of my terrible opinions even as I chose not to grow out of anime fandom. I wrote about how making money online has changed since I started working remotely around the same time I started this blog. I didn’t do this intentionally, but it’s clear that this ten-year milestone has been on my mind. 

This will be the 905th post published on Otaku Journalist (though 214 early posts are now private, and here’s why). I no longer keep a regular blogging schedule and I’m not exactly prolific anymore, but it’s been wonderful to have a platform to publish my writing, one on which I don’t have to answer to anyone. Whether you’ve been here for 10 years or 10 weeks, I appreciate you reading this. See you in this blog’s next decade!

How I’m learning to respect my daughter’s online privacy

Four weeks ago today, Eva Artesia was born, but it feels like we just got home from the hospital yesterday. Eva’s life so far has been a dreamlike haze, a sometimes illogical schedule that she dictates and I haplessly obey, grateful that I gave myself exactly zero expectations during my maternity leave. I rarely leave my house or know what day it is so sometimes it feels like she and I are existing outside of the normal passage of time. It’s been tough sometimes, but it’s been blissful to have this time together, living each day just for her. I forgot that we all start out as tiny, cuddly creatures who just want to be held for hours on end. 

At this period in Eva’s life, it’s hard to remember that my snuggly daughter won’t always be this way. She’ll get bigger and begin making her own decisions. She’ll have likes and dislikes. And many years from now, she’ll have her own online presence. So as much as I want to tell the world all about how great she is, let me tell you about my attempts to Not Do That. 

At first, I was posting about Eva on Twitter, but I’ve decided to stop. With over 8,000 followers plus viewers who come over from Forbes, I have way too big of a footprint there. Instead, I’m posting on Instagram stories (which expire after 24 hours) or Facebook set to friends only. I’m being careful about which photos I share, like the one above from Jessica Smith Photography when Eva was seven days old. It shows Eva in her best light unlike, for example, the goofy photos I took of her sprawled out in her bassinet this morning. And instead of blogging about her, I’m writing as often as I remember in an offline diary about her life. I plan to share it with her when she’s older, similar to the baby book my mom made for me. 

Right now, it’s hard not to think about Eva on par with one of my friends’ pets. The cooing noises she makes when she’s happy remind me of a purring kitten. But more than any other, this Slate piece about a mom who refuses to stop sharing public stories about her fourth-grader (even after she asked her mom to stop!) has reminded me that Eva is not my possession and her life is not my writing material. Only Eva owns her life’s experiences. And whether or not she chooses to share them online is something that will eventually be up to her. 

I recently had an online privacy disagreement with a client that made me feel that beliefs about online identity may be generational. My client asked me to remove their office phone number from their business website, citing an article that suggested it could open them up to more robocalls. I took the number down as asked, but I also vocalized that I didn’t think it would matter either way. Once stuff is online, I don’t think you can put it back in Pandora’s box. I’m somebody who has been “pwned” and had my personal data breached online a whopping 25 times—not counting stuff like the Equifax hack. Heck, I recently discovered that there’s a page about me, without my consent, on a foot fetish website!

My belief is that my data is already out there and it’s too late to wipe it from the web. Instead, I take reactive measures like freezing my credit, using lengthy nonsense passwords even I can’t memorize with 1Password to manage them, and always using a VPN on public WiFi. My philosophy is that everything about me is already out there, so I have to just keep anyone from using that readily-available information against me. However, Eva’s generation will probably be savvier than mine, and they might boomerang back to the proactive approach. I’m already trying to help her out. She’s only a month old, but she already has a two-factor-authenticated Gmail account ready for when she needs it.

I plan to still write here about the spaces where our stories overlap. Some stuff about my pregnancy, which was at times scary and high-risk (but thankfully, that’s all over now). Essays on what it’s like to be a parent on top of the other stuff I do. I just don’t want her to Google herself in ten years and see embarrassing photos and stories from her childhood. It’s the same courtesy I give to John, who is a lot more private than I am, by rarely posting about him here. Even though—or should I say because—she’s unable to ask for that yet.

Here’s what I do want to tell you about my daughter: it’s pronounced Eva with a hard E. So it’s not like the E in Evangelion; we actually decided on the name before the show dominated the anime community discussion this summer. (Artesia, however, is absolutely a reference to the Gundam character who is as brave and kind as we hope Eva will be.)

Someday, if she chooses, she can share the rest of her story herself.

Photo by Jessica Smith Photography.

The Otaku Journalist is going on maternity leave

Just a heads up to say I am officially on maternity leave. That means I will be slow to respond to anything or anyone, here and in my email and probably even on social media. 

Today is my last day not being somebody’s mom, as my labor and delivery are scheduled for tomorrow evening (because apparently we can and do plan babies now). I’m both excited for it and not at all—labor is, by its very definition, hard work, but on the other hand, I can’t wait to meet the tiny person who frequently sticks her hand or foot out of me like a bizarre tumor. 

Maternity leave in America is, as I’ve stated many times, a joke. But I’m lucky to have somehow gotten just about all my work finished in advance. I’ve notified all my employers, and if you try to email me you, too, will get my auto-responder. Even though I technically could be working today, I’m mostly going to spend it cleaning my house because as the old saying about newborn care goes: “Eat when the baby eats, sleep when the baby sleeps, and clean when the baby cleans.” It’s been a long, strange nine months and I’m glad to have had the time and space in my life to slow down and prepare for this enormous change, from stocking a nursery with the help of my family and friends to getting to attend my sister’s wedding last week without interrupting it in the most dramatic way possible!

Now, as I wrote in How I’m preparing to take maternity leave as a freelancer, all that’s left is to keep my expectations very low. I have no idea what my life will be like after tomorrow or what I’ll be capable of, so I’m setting a baseline of zero. I’ll let my new baby set the pace for what comes next, which is a very scary thing to say for this freelancer who only recently began taking weekends off. Even just a few years ago, I could never have imagined wanting to have a kid of my own—I was very work-focused and wouldn’t that just cut into my productivity? (The many reasons I changed my mind are a blog post for another time.) Now I’m starting a new role and accepting from the start that I’ll be out of my depth. But I’m more excited to rise to this challenge than perhaps for any job I’ve had before. Thank you for your patience while I figure it out. 

Photo by Jessica Smith Photography.

How to give yourself a quarterly review

These slow summer days are the perfect time to put some juice back in your business. Whether you’ve got a side hustle or you’re a full-time freelancer like me, a business lull is a great opportunity to spend some time evaluating your progress and setting goals for the future.

Believe it or not, we’re already in Q3 of 2019 (according to the US freelance estimated tax schedule), and in September it’ll be time to put it on the books. That makes it a great time to assess how Q3 has gone and prepare goals for Q4. 

 

 

This week, I’ve created a worksheet to make this easier for you to do. I’ve made this resource flexible enough that you can redo the exercise every quarter!  

Download the worksheet

Simply choose three main areas in your business that are ripe for improvement. Then, set immediate tasks for how you can improve them, plus long-term goals to track progress next quarter. Here are a few areas that I’d suggest focusing your worksheet on, plus some ideas for end of quarter tasks and next quarter goals: 

Focus Area: Online Presence

End of Quarter Tasks:

Next Quarter Goals:

  • Launch a newsletter.
  • Write 1 new blog post per week.
  • Download and use a time-tracker to make online time more productive.

Focus Area: Clients

End of Quarter Tasks:

  • Check-in with an old client you haven’t heard from in a while.
  • Track down any overdue invoices.
  • Figure out which client you like best and how you can work for them more. 

Next Quarter Goals:

  • Find 2 new paying clients.
  • Fire 1 current client who is more trouble than they’re worth. 
  • Prepare a holiday gift (or just a card) to send to each client in Q4. 

Focus Area: Finances

End of Quarter Tasks:

  • Update finance tracking spreadsheet or software. 
  • Calculate how much income you made this quarter.
  • Make sure you have enough money for Q3 tax payment.

Next Quarter Goals:

  • Make a new savings/debt repayment goal and start putting money into it. 
  • Start or contribute to a retirement fund. 
  • Set a new quarterly earnings goal and figure out how you can reach it. 

Focus Area: Business Development

End of Quarter Tasks:

  • Make a pie chart of different types of work you do. Are you satisfied with the breakdown?
  • Brainstorm new types of income you can add to your business.
  • Use your blog or social media to self-promote a recent business accomplishment. 

Next Quarter Goals:

I even filled it out myself—here’s how my version looks. 

If it’s hard to see, right-click and select “open image in new tab.”

Like most self-employed people, I do all my work in a well-lit place with a succulent plant and this definitely wasn’t staged. Kidding of course. As you can see, it was pretty hard for me to come up with future goals right before I take two months off. If you’re comfortable with sharing, I’d love to see your review, too!

Download the worksheet

Here’s to a clarifying Q3 wrap-up, and for those of us not about to go on maternity leave, a strong Q4!

Top photo credit: Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash.

“How dare she?”

I was recently quoted in a Rolling Stone article about Belle Delphine, an Instagram model who takes a lot of inspiration from kawaii culture and Japanese style aesthetics. Belle has gained an enormous following for her risque cosplay, but recently went viral for selling jars of her supposed “gamer girl bathwater” to “thirsty gamer boys” for $30 a pop. 

Skipping over how proud my parents should be on having a daughter who was asked to define ahegao to a mass audience, my favorite part of discussing Belle’s story was talking about her fearlessly entrepreneurial nature. She found a lucrative market and exploited it. 

Good for her! If guys want to spend their money on her bathwater and she knows it, then it’s awesome that she’s making bank on that concept. But it’s undeniable that part of the reason this went viral is because people can’t believe she’d have the gall to do it. How dare she make money off of her cartoonishly desperate followers? How dare she claim ownership over her own sex appeal? How dare she make a profit over something so esoteric, even if it did sell out twice?

“How dare she?” is a line that has followed me internally through a lot of my career. It’s the question I can always picture on my imaginary critics’ lips. Nobody has ever actually said it to me, of course, but it’s always the first accusation that flies through my mind.

How dare she quit a perfectly good job to start a business that might fail? Even after six years of being successfully self-employed, I sometimes wonder if I did the right thing.

How dare she raise her rates or negotiate for higher pay? Every time I ask for a better price for a lowball payment offer or consider raising rates for writing or web design, I wonder if this is the time that I’ve finally gone Too Far and will lose a client, but it hasn’t happened yet. 

How dare she charge a consulting fee? The “nice” thing to do would be to answer questions for free, not to charge a fee for an SEO analysis or to tell strangers emailing me basic journalism or blogging questions to check out my books on the topic. 

I think the presence of an outsized inner critic is particularly common among the self-employed. You don’t get day-to-day feedback from colleagues or a quarterly review with your boss to gauge how you’re performing. You spend a lot of time throwing things at the wall, ideally as minimum viable products, in order to see if they’ll stick. Some of those ideas, like gamer girl bathwater, can be a little out there! I doubt even Belle realized how well that one would go. 

The part of my brain that asks “how dare she?” is imposter syndrome at work. Imposter syndrome remains one of my favorite topics to write about because it’s especially pervasive among the people in my life who appear (to me) to be the most capable. Instead of listening to this inner critic, better to check in with your friends and colleagues about whether a practice is really as audacious as it might seem inside your head. 

How dare you? Chances are you’ll learn that, if anything, you should dare more. 

Other posts I’ve written about imposter syndrome: