First off, if you haven’t heard or read my short story submission to the White Noise Infinity podcast yet, I put it up for free in the Short Story section of this here fancy-schmancy website! Go give it a read, lemme know if you have any feedback!
It’s not yet set in stone, but it looks an awful lot like next year in September I’ll be making my first ever trip to Japan.
Pros: I’ve been dreaming about going to Japan since 1998. That makes it 30 years… a long time to build up anticipation.
Cons: I’ll only be going to Tokyo and Hakone (a total of 7 or 8 days in Japan, and then travel to and from). It’s staggeringly expensive. There is no way my expectations for the trip have any hope of being fulfilled. It’s really, really expensive. There are a million things I want to do, and I won’t be able to afford to do most of them.
And did I mention the cost? Yeah. I started saving in August, and I will continue to save until the day before I fly out, and I still won’t be able to afford many of the things I want.
But hey, at least I can go! Theoretically. A lot of things could go wrong between now and then, but hope springs eternal!
In other news, I’ll be meeting a good friend of mine in Tokyo to split some of the costs. This is good, except that I’m trying to explain to him that me writing every day during the trip isn’t really optional: I write every day, period. Until I am making my living through writing alone, it’s just a part of my life. Some time between waking up and sleeping each day, some progress must be made on a short story or novel I’m working on.
And I get how that doesn’t make sense to people (especially during a vacation from my paid work!), but that’s just the way it has to be.
Once I’m a full-time writer, then I can take actual vacations occaisonally. Until then? I just sometimes get to go on very picturesque writing trips.