Kirk here announcing that I’m planning to slow down. I’ve decided that I’ve bitten off a bit more than I can chew and therefore need to take steps to reduce my work load.
- Why have I been posting so much, anyway?
Earlier this year, I started to feel that I wanted to do a better job of giving people advance warning about events. But, I couldn’t find a simple list of upcoming local events, even in Japanese, so I decided to subscribe to some Google alerts for news articles with various Japanese terms that I thought would give me the kinds of information I was looking for. Basically, I think I can say that my strategy worked. I feel that I have been better able to provide advance warning about upcoming events in the last few months than in the past. But, it meant that I needed to go through a number of alerts each day, each with links to many articles in Japanese. Then, if I found something I felt I should share, translation and additional research (searching for appropriate information in English, etc.) also took time.
Another side effect of receiving the various Google alerts I subscribed to was that I happened upon other information (news, etc.) that I felt needed to be shared on the page. So, the combination of the event information and other information I happened upon led me to post significantly more than I had been posting in the past.
- What have I learned?
Even though I’ve decided to unsubscribe from most of the Google alerts and thereby reduce the number of posts I feel compelled to make, I think that this has been a valuable learning experience for me. I’ve learned that what really needs to happen is for a governmental body or some body devoted to the promotion of tourism to organize Japanese-language event information in a single calendar or list of events. Once the Japanese-language information is properly organized, it will be much easier for people like me to look through the list of events and then pick out information to introduce on pages such as this one.
Someday when I get a little more time, I’m planning to see if I can get some government agency or organization that promotes tourism to do this. I’ll report back if I make any progress.
- Am I going to stop posting?
No, I’ll still be pretty compulsive about posting the information that comes my way (changing my basic personality isn’t part of the plan). I’ll just be receiving far fewer e-mail notifications so I anticipate that the number of posts will fall accordingly. I’m sorry to say, though, that this means there will be more events that I will not be able to tell you about in advance.
Also, since I’ve already scheduled some posts for next week that are based on information from Japanese-language Google alerts, the change in my approach may not be apparent immediately.
P.S. I stole the graphic for this post from the following page: