Partially Employed April 16, 2010

Hello, dear readers, it’s me again — back in the old U. S. of A. As I had suspected would be the case, I wasn’t able to find a job in Tokyo that would provide me with a visa without requiring me to stay at least a year or two. I wish I could have stayed just a week longer, to see the cherry blossoms bloom, but as it was I left Japan only two days before my tourist visa expired. But I figure that will only give me another reason to go back again! In the meantime, I’m spending some time in St. Paul until my boyfriend comes back from Tokyo, where he’s still living. Then we pick up his bright yellow car and hit the road for the 12-hour drive to Denver. (For the fourth time.)

I’m continuing my work for the travel guide company, and in fact I just heard from one of the English-language magazines in Japan whose editors I bravely rang up on the phone and they’re going to publish a feature on the maps! So now I feel like I’ve actually accomplished something. And, as for more personal accomplishments, I happened to tell the owner (who is the closest thing to what you’d call my “supervisor”) about some grammatical and stylistic issues I noticed in the Tokyo map, and she said she’s going to implement every one of my suggested changes for the next edition. Not only that, but she says she’ll consider me for future editing work! As one of several people on this blog interested in the wide world of publishing, and editing being particular interest of mine, that would be fabulous.

Meanwhile, I’ve recommenced work as a “virtual assistant” for the guy in Denver who hired me on an as-needed basis back in October. I’d been hoping he’d have work for me while I was in Tokyo, which would have given me a little bit of desperately-needed cash, but no such luck. He didn’t even send my final paycheck from December, despite repeated reminders, until last week. Ah, the joys of freelancing for an absent-minded lawyer whose slogan is, “Let’s sue the bastards!” But he pays me reasonably, when he remembers to pay me — and another check should be arriving very soon, provided he actually starts paying me on the new weekly schedule we agreed on. I’ve also applied for a temp job at a law school bookstore here in the Twin Cities, which needs month-long help for the textbook buyback season. I may actually make rent on our Denver apartment! (Ah yes, we’re currently paying for two apartments … we had to start paying for Denver again after our subletter moved out at the end of March.)

So it’s map-plugging and word-processing, and possibly law-school-temping, until it’s back to Colorado sometime in the second half of May … and then I get to start the job search aaaall over again.
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