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2019 In Review: 9 questions to help you process and reflect

This year, I don’t have any big plans for New Year’s Eve. I’ve been heading to bed when Eva does, around 7 PM, and I don’t think I could stay up until midnight if I wanted! 

Even so, I’ll be continuing one of my New Year’s rituals. In both 2017 and 2018, I dedicated the final post of Otaku Journalist of the year to helping me (and hopefully you) assess how the past 365 days have gone, and I did that this year, too. 

Below are nine questions I’ve been asking myself since 2017 as a way to summarize the year in review. Though it’s a personal exercise, I enjoy sharing it with my blog readers. I hope that my reflections encourage you to make your own. 

What made up your body of work this year? Which parts are you most proud of?

  • I started working with a new client, Tubular. I get to use their fascinating social media tracking tools to write about viral video trends. My favorite article for them so far is Transgender Videos: Why Brands Should Join the Conversation. 
  • Speaking to Syracuse University students about cosplay. The invitation came when I was right out of the hospital after having Eva and I felt less like a person with any knowledge worth sharing than a collection of sore body parts. Preparing for this talk gave me a chance to be more than a mom for the first time in nearly three months.
  • The CBC radio interview I did about the Kyoto Animation fire despite still going through my own emotions. I’m proud of myself for getting through it. 
  • Honestly, anything I wrote while 9 months pregnant was a major accomplishment over fatigue and nerves. Even when I’m up all night with Eva I’m not as tired as I was this summer, because at least my body feels comfortable and predictable again. I know I keep talking about this—having my kid was the most defining part of 2019 for me.

What were your top 5 moments of the year?

What are you really glad is over?

My pregnancy, but not for the reasons you’d think. At around six months along, I was diagnosed with an unusual complication called a velamentous insertion. It could be nothing, or it could result in a stillbirth. The uncertainty was maddening. 

Leading up to my due date, I had to go to the doctor twice a week for tests and ultrasounds to see what was going on in there. For my own sanity, I treated this like an annoying inconvenience. It wasn’t until after Eva was born at just five pounds eight ounces that we realized she really had been fighting for her life in there. Fortunately, all the danger is over now that she’s out, and we’re so happy to see her packing on the pounds.

How are you different today than you were 365 days ago?

I’m better at living in the moment now. I don’t worry as much about the past or the future. Eva needs me to be right here for her right now, and she’s made me match her pace.

It feels so typical, so basic, how I can’t stop talking about her. I never thought motherhood would change me but it has absolutely transformed my routine, my mindset, even my values. 

Is there anything you achieved that you forgot to celebrate?

I got promoted to Senior Contributor at Forbes. 

Though I’m on a hiatus from my studies, I graduated from Japanese 405. I started studying the language in 2014, so to go at it for five years felt like a major accomplishment. 

What have you changed your perspective on this year?

I used to be very uncomfortable asking others for help. Then I spent much of this year physically limited in one way or another, and got better at expressing what I needed. If I needed to stop and rest on a long walk, I said so. When a colleague offered me her granola bar during a work event (my hunger came in uncomfortably quickly during the first trimester), I accepted. In the weeks after Eva was born, I subsisted on meals friends and family cooked for me. Not so long ago this would have made me feel guilty and ashamed that I couldn’t take care of myself. But being in a vulnerable position has not only made me appreciate the kindness of others, but renewed my empathy for other people going through difficult times. 

Who are the people that really came through for you this year?

The dozens of doctors I saw throughout my pregnancy who vigilantly monitored my complication. Definitely not my insurance company, but for sure the many insurance phone representatives who took time out of their days to keep me from getting overbilled and, in several cases, bringing an incorrect $500+ bill down to $0. I think the more you go to the doctor, the more of a chance you have of getting billed incorrectly because it happened to me half a dozen times in 2019. 

What were some pieces of media that defined your year?

  • Demon Slayer. Like everyone else on Earth, I got totally sucked in!
  • Naruto. Somehow I never picked up this classic until 2019. I’m reading it on my Viz Media Shonen Jump app, which is the most-used app on my phone.
  • I frequently had prenatal insomnia, and the positive part was that I read way more books than usual. My favorite piece of fiction was another classic: I, Robot by Issac Asimov. The best nonfiction I read was Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino. These are both affiliate links so I can fund more book buying in 2020. 
  • Does performance art count as media? I made an effort to go out more evenings this year since I knew I’d have to get a sitter after Eva got here. I ended up seeing several Japanese arts performed for the first time: kyudo (archery), a karuta demonstration, a koto performance, a Noh play. 

What will you be leaving behind in 2019?

Feeling completely out of my depth all the time. So much happened this year on my personal life it was often overwhelming. There was a birth, a death, and two weddings in my immediate family. With all of this going on, I did not do my best writing this year. But I think that working while undergoing these many changes made me more resilient. I don’t need to spend as much time preparing to write. I don’t even need my laptop—I wrote most of this post with my thumb, on my phone at odd hours of the night, while holding a baby. I’m better at snatching spare moments to write and better at avoiding procrastination; because by the time I’m done procrastinating I might be busy with a baby. Freed from these prior self-constraints around writing devices, work hours, and standard routine, I think 2020 could be my wordiest year yet. 

If you decide to do a similar exercise to this one, let me know! I’d love to read it.

Lead photo by Andreas Dress on Unsplash.

Otaku Journalist is 10 years old!

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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.