Otaku Links: Life goes on

Uncategorized

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I think it’s weird when bloggers completely omit current events because it’s like, “Are you living in a different world that is completely untouched by the things that are affecting my life?” So let’s talk about it. As you might have guessed, I voted for Secretary Clinton and I’m definitely upset my preferred candidate didn’t win. I’m especially saddened that my exact demographic, white women, had such a major role in preventing us from electing the first female president.

A lot of my life plans are up in the air now that I have no idea what’s going to happen next, but one thing I’ll definitely be doing is donating to some pro-women, pro-immigrant, anti-bigotry causes—ideally in my Trump-voting relatives’ names, as their Christmas gifts. And if you’re equally upset, I suggest you make a plan to do something that helps you take control over the situation, even if that plan is to numb your feelings with an anime marathon all weekend.

In the meantime, here are some links to take your mind off of it all:

  • I just got two panels accepted at Katsucon—37 Years of Gundam Anime and He Is A Char: A Tribute to Gundam’s Most Memorable Masked Man—and one waitlisted—Gunpla is Freedom. If you’ll be at Katsucon this year, you should come watch me being a total Gundam geek, and tell me if you’re doing any panels there, too!
  • They sure talk up the pork cutlet bowl in Yuri!!! on Ice. Now Crunchyroll’s Emily Bushman shows you how to make katsudon at home in the latest installment of her anime cooking column.
  • My reviews of DAYS were fairly lukewarm but one thing I always gave high marks to was Tsukushi Tsukamoto’s flawless characterization, which always made him likeable without being too goody-goody. In this old column I’ve been meaning to post, Peter Fobian delves into what makes Tsukamoto tick.
  • Unfortunately, the Playing Grounded Kickstarter I shared last month didn’t make its goal, so I can’t get their forest altar jigsaw puzzle (though I can pre-order and hope that enough other people do, too). Still, I love how they spoke about their experience transparently and with a sense of humor. It’s easy to talk about a successful project and much harder to talk about what happens after you fail. I’ve been trying to follow this when my income reports don’t match my expectations.

Illustration by Fuzichoco for Playing Grounded Puzzles.

October 2016 Monthly Income Report

Careers, Income Reports

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Welcome to the fifth month of sharing my monthly income with the world as much as I feel comfortable with! Only, I’m not sure who I’m doing this for anymore. I haven’t been getting any comments on these posts, and I’m wondering if maybe they’re not helpful. Unless I hear otherwise, I’ll be concluding this series after six months.

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First off—overall income. I’m getting a stair-step effect, but it’s deceptive, as usual. I worked a lot this month, and I don’t include the money I am expecting to get paid, which usually comes 30 days after I bill. Right now I’m owed several thousand. So probably November will be a better month regardless of how much work I do in it.

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In other words, when you look at a chart like this and see freelance work taking up the smallest piece of the pie, it’s not that it’s taking up the smallest part of my time spent working. Instead, this chart shows what I’ve been paid for. And man, my part time job was weird this month. A billing error (yes, the second in two months!) meant I got paid double my regular rate. To make up for it, they’ll take it out of a later paycheck.

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But that dark teal part of the chart is about to go away – entirely. I just gave my two weeks notice at my job, which means I’ll have worked about exactly a calendar year since my starting date on November 16, 2015. I’ll write more about that decision in a future blog post, but for now, I need to think about how it affects my finances. Basically, it was some padding against the ups and downs of self-employment, so now I’ll need to work harder on ways to ensure a stable, similar income every month.

Amazon is definitely going to help with that. October marked the beginning of my most profitable time of the year—the holidays. I’m hoping to break $1,000 for the first time this month.

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I spent a little more than usual this month, because it was time to renew my Leadpages account. I use Leadpages to capture emails for my mailing lists and produce webinars but I haven’t been taking advantage of it well, lately. I’m hoping that after I quit my day job I’ll have more time to set up systems that make Leadpages work for me.

How did I do on my October financial goals? Badly on one, better on the other two. I had more freelance work than I’d predicted, so I did not spend 40 hours on my new project; it was more like 10. I posted three times, not four, on Gunpla 101, though I did post twice on Candle Fandom, which is quickly growing into its earning potential. If only I could pay the rent with free candles people send me, I’d be set! Somehow, I did meet my aggressive savings goal, too.

My November financial goals are:

  • Complete my Gunpla 101 holiday shopping guide. This is the most lucrative time of the year, but only if I work at it!
  • Try again to work 40 hours on my new business venture. Now I’ll have more time and fewer excuses.
  • Set up better systems with my newsletters to make that Leadpages account worth it.

I’ll refrain from being a broken record and asking you to comment. But if you find these income reports useful, let me know on social media, email, or whatever is most comfortable for you.

Previously: 

Otaku Links: On Ice!!!

Otaku Links

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  • Is Yuri!!! on Ice hella gay or just playing at LGBT representation with “queer baiting?” And here’s a question I didn’t think of before reading Jacob’s article—does it matter? In What’s So Gay About Yuri!!! on Ice?, he goes over the veritable rainbow of ways queerness shows up in our favorite anime.
  • We Have Always Been Here, Motherfucker. As I get older, I increasingly appreciate these first-person essays from older fans about visibility. Games writer Monica Valentinelli writes about her life experience being a woman in gaming.

Screenshot via Yuri!!! on Ice

How to be professional in the age of Twitter

Careers

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Every now and then something punctures my personal narrative of being a giant screw-up. This time, it was being invited back to speak at my alma mater, the University of Mary Washington.

Despite my constant rambling about cartoons, I do have some of the hallmarks of a successful alum—the books, the bylines, and generally having my life together enough to send snail mail holiday cards every year. It’s a far cry from who I was in college. I don’t like the person I was back then. I was unhappy with myself, which made me selfish and cruel to people I cared about.  

Still, curiosity and flattery brought me back. I invited John and two of our college friends to come, and we arrived at the brand new campus building that none of us had ever been in, where I would be presenting on an alumni panel. At 29, I was the oldest alum there, from the class of 2009. It’s been 11 years since I moved into my freshman dorm. This was before that dorm had air conditioning! Believe me when I say that my college was founded in 1908 and looked like it for a long time. Now they have technology-forward buildings that remind me of the Apple Store and the dining hall, which used to give me heartburn, now serves quinoa.

The curriculum has also jolted into the future. Before I spoke, we listened to a panel of current UMW students who are taking advantage of a new program at the university called A Domain of One’s Own. Students can have their own dot coms without paying a cent, so the panel was about them showcasing their blogs and portfolio sites. The older students were using while job hunting and building online identities, which I thought was fantastically ahead of the curve. I wonder if having a program like that would have grounded me and helped me think more about my future instead of floundering around sort of depressed.

It’s certainly true today that my online identity is the entire reason I’m able to find work at all, which is also why i was invited to speak on this panel. The moderator sent us all the questions in advance, and being the introvert I am I decided to write them up so I wouldn’t trip over my words when I was on stage. I wanted to share my answers with you because this is exactly the kind of advice I’d love to give to aspiring otaku journalists just starting out.

This is a pretty long post for me, but the TL;DR version is that social media has blurred the line between professional and inappropriate. As a freelancer, every day is an interview while I look for potential new writing and web development gigs. Here’s how I make my extremely geeky online presence an advantage, not a hindrance, while I do that.

1. What is your most prominent digital identity?

Twitter. It started as a hobby, but now I have nearly 6,000 followers. I use it to broadcast my articles, blog posts, and web design projects, along with anything my friends are working on that I’d like to amplify. I recently lost access to my Twitter account due to a technical issue, and the most helpless feeling was knowing that usually if I want to access my audience to let them know I need help/amplification in some way, I tweet them.

a. Is it your website or your social media account ( e.g. LinkedIn, Twitter) why or why not?

In a perfect world, my blog would be my primary online identity, but there’s an extra wrinkle with blogs—you have to tell your audience to meet you halfway. With social media, you are showing up on your audience’s doorstep, where they already are.

1. Do you have different accounts for different audiences/purposes? 

I used to. Ever since I was at UMW, I’ve been interested in Japanese anime to the point where it’s a major part of my identity that influences which jobs I take. When I was less experienced in my field, I tried to maintain a more neutral online presence to keep from scaring off potential employers. Now, I’d rather work for employers who hire me because of my interests. I recently designed a website for a Japanese pop culture company. I have been hired to write about Japanese videogames and comics specifically. So I make sure that’s on my calling card.

2. What decisions did you make when creating or tailoring your personal websites or your different social media accounts?

Control is very important to me online. With social media, you’re in somebody else’s walled garden that can be altered or deleted at any time. So I’ve always paid for hosting and domain names and coded my own websites.

3. Did you have these digital identities as a student at UMW? Or did you begin to create them, or start thinking about creating them while at UMW?

Yes! I was required to have a WordPress site for several of my classes at UMW, so I began getting really familiar with the software back then. My professors encouraged my coding customization, and that’s probably one of the reasons I work as a WordPress developer today.

4. Have you deleted any accounts? If so, which and why?

Never. Since I work as a freelance technology journalist, it’s important for me to first, be reachable in a number of ways and second, be fluent. I am a little old for Snapchat, but I made myself download it and learn to use it because I want to be capable of communicating online no matter which way comes in vogue next. As a developer, I risk obsolescence if I am not constantly learning new technologies and updating my skills. I feel the same way about Internet and computer literacy.

5. Have you had to navigate any delicate situations and if so, would you be willing to share your story?

Where to start? Since I have written a lot about video games and I happen to be a woman, I am a grizzled veteran of getting insulted online. It started with my first online media internship at Kotaku, a former Gawker subsidiary, after I graduated here. I’ve been called fat, ugly, stupid, a hack, a fraud, needs a nose job, people have dug up my former address and other personal information. When I became a journalist who writes online, I gave up my right to privacy.

When this happens, there’s no way to win. You defend yourself by going dark, by refusing to engage, by continuing to produce content as if it doesn’t bother you at all.

To this day, I do not post photos of my friends online. I run an online business with my husband, and we cut off all photos above the neck. I’m also careful not to discuss future plans. I know I endanger myself, at least a little, by making myself visible online and I try very hard to make sure that my decisions don’t negatively impact my family and friends.

6. What role, if any, do you think your digital identity played into your post-undergrad life?

Listen, I wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for Twitter. I was working retail before I got my first web development job—because my future employer liked my blog design. After that I got into online journalism because my editor sent me a tweet asking if I’d like to work for him. I get 75% of my clients through online connections—the rest is through friends of friends.

a. Did you promote them when applying for grad school or jobs?

I’ve always had something digital on my resume. For tech jobs it’s my GitHub profile and for writing jobs it’s my blog and portfolio.

b. Did any of your admissions counselors or employers comment on your online presence?

Absolutely. I feel bad for everyone else named Lauren Orsini because I dominate the Google results. It’s hard to miss, and it always comes up in interviews.

7. What advice would you give current undergraduate students in regards to cultivating a digital identity?

Start general, go niche. Become known for a few specific topics or categories. It takes a long time to get to know a person, so online, you need to become an abbreviation of yourself. Think of your website as your elevator pitch. If somebody can’t figure out what you’re about and why this site exists within five minutes, you’ve already lost them.

a. What must they do?

Have an internet presence outside of Facebook or LinkedIn, which are at the mercy of corporations. Have a personal blog or website you have total control of, and do your best to make it come up as the first result when somebody googles your name and expertise.

b. What shouldn’t they

Remember that people are watching. Don’t have tantrums about your employer on Twitter. Don’t burn bridges. Even in 2016, there are certain things professionals don’t do. Take it from me. I write about cartoons for Forbes, but I still conduct myself like somebody who is constantly interviewing for my next job.

Otaku Links: A time for butts

Otaku Links

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  • Other than that one piece, I’ve been doing technical support behind the scenes. I’m hoping to expand my web development clientele, so it’s good practice. Speaking of behind the scenes, Amelia wrote 5 Things I Learned by Starting a Feminist Anime Website for The Mary Sue about what the process has been like for her.
  • Otaku Journalist reader (and Japanator writer) Soul Tsukino has just published his novel, Cityscape Tokyo. Sounds like a story that will definitely appeal to anime fans.
  • I love Geek Girl Con and hope I have a chance to visit again, but until that day comes I’ll settle with Lisa Granshaw’s excellent interview with its founder, Jennifer K. Stuller. The two talk about the origins of the con and how it carves out a space for geek women and girls without being exclusive.
  • Miles at Crunchyroll just released this telling graph of favorite fall anime by state. I live right between Keijo!!!!!!!! and Haikyuu!! territory; there are exclamation points everywhere.

Photo of Ladybeard at Comiket via.