Strangely, I’m starting to feel like I’ve been liberated in a way, as if up until now writing a blog or expressing myself as a means of making a living has been banned or looked down upon. When you’re gainfully employed, you have bounds. You have to live within a sterile environment and it is anything but freeing. I feel that until now, in a way I have been discouraged from doing creative endeavours in favour of taking on more ‘normal’ jobs, meaning being gainfully employed. But now I feel as if I’ve unlocked a door into another world, a world that really has no bounds. And it’s odd. All I did was write a newsletter.

I had felt a hint of this before when I was working for a private English school. It wasn’t the teaching to a prescribed curriculum, it was when I was actively creating and designing activities to use in class. Now this is taking it to the next level.

When I first did interpretation, I remember thinking it was completely different to my experience to date because up until then, I was using Japanese only for myself. Up until today, I had also only written newsletters for Yamabushido or the Dewa Sanzan (at the bottom of the page). Just before, I sent out the first of my Mountains of Wisdom mailers, and it was fun! I wanted to keep people in the loop with the 100 Famous Mountains of Yamagata Project, and with the mailer you see (to the right on the PC, below on smaller screens), you can sign up and I’ll be sure to send you updates as they come. Now I guess I just need to do this a bit more often.