So while I've been primarily studying for the past year, I've also been goofing off to do some 'work.'
This has involved everything from writing to visiting a tourist area in the south.
While it has become clear that I will never be a linguistically agile person, what with it taking so long to learn Japanese, I've found that I'm decent enough at dropping in and out of a variety of situations to do a variety of jobs.
I'm coming to the end of my language learning, having spent the last of my saved money on this terms tuition. With that, my options are basically as follows:
Sponge
Mooch
Work
I don't really have it in me to sponge any more than I already have been.
I don't really know what mooch means.
I guess that leaves work.
So the next question is, where to work? I still don't have the necessary language qualifications to work full-time at a 'real,' company, so it's probably going to be a part-time job somewhere. If you will indulge me patronising the reader a little, if you are under 50 or so years old, you might misunderstand the term part-time here.
It used to mean fewer than X hours a week (depending on country, somewhere around 25 hours a week).
Part-time now means a job that pays terribly, has zero benefits (health insurance, pension, etc) and can be any number of hours a week. To put this in perspective, I was a part-timer while I was teaching, because I was paid for X number of hours despite working much longer.
At this point you're wondering what on earth I'm talking about and why I've written this confusing screed against the current state of employment law around the developed world.
Don't worry about it.
This post is entirely for me, reminding myself why I quit my previous job and am working to improve myself. Everyone has to write something like from time to time.