Greetings from the chaos

Please note: While my books were translated by professionals, this blog post got a little help from AI, meaning it may not be a perfect translation.

You know that feeling? When you want to clean out a closet, pull everything out, and then completely overwhelmed by the incredible mess you want to stuff everything back in? That’s what my life feels like right now. Everything is upside down. And everything is intertwined, like a big jumble of plugs, printer cables and mini-USB, somewhere in an Ikea box.

A week and a half ago I flew to the Netherlands, and although the state of the world suddenly made it an eighteen-hour trip with a stopover in Korea (the poetry does not escape me), it actually went quite well. Of course I suffered from reverse culture shock, which already started on the plane, when even the KLM stewardesses were chatting in the galley with their face masks on their chins. But thanks to my business upgrade I was able to sleep six hours from Korea to Amsterdam, so I didn’t suffer much from jet lag. Going to bed ultra-early was my thing anyway.

Proof

So I’m here mainly to launch the German translation of my book, and that’s going anything but smoothly. For example, I haven’t been able to order a proof copy for a week and a half. Amazon itself doesn’t know why, and keeps asking me “just a few more days of patience” while they figure it out. Now I’ve already decided to skip the Amazon proof, a gamble I’m willing to take, because I’ve already gone through this process with the English translation. And I had already printed out the entire interior in Japan, in the convenience store (so convenient!), so most of the double-hooks and commas are already out.

But when I got the def version last week, and I wanted to put it live, there came the following Amazon hurdle: “We see that this book is a translation, can you please prove that you do have the rights?” Oddly enough, they never asked that for the English one, but anyway. “Within five days please turn it in, otherwise we’ll cancel the whole thing!” And so now I’m waiting for Blossom Books to prepare a paper in which they declare that I do indeed have the right to publish the translation of my own book.

If this then that

Meanwhile, my Japanese company number also arrived. I decided to move forward, and open a Japanese company account with Wise right away… But of course they still needed a scan of my paper company registration certificate. My intermediary is working on it, will probably take a few days again. As soon as I have the Japanese business account, I can cancel the Dutch one, deregister from the Chamber of Commerce, etcetera, etcetera. I have a whole list in my phone of steps that depend on other steps. If this is taken care of, then that.

Furthermore, I found out in the Netherlands that my Japanese phone subscription does not support roaming, which means that I cannot be reached at all on my Japanese number. Pretty shitty, of course, so I’ll have to change that when I get back.

And then, of course, there are things like my company website – I’ve already registered toepsmedia dot jp, but it now redirects to the dot nl. Someday that will have to improve. My email addresses are a mess, as are my accounts with things like Amazon, Spotify and Apple. One thing I have been able to cancel: when ASN announced the availability of Apple Pay this week, my old ING account could go out the door.

Desk flip deluxe

I don’t like this. I konmari’d my life a few years ago, and that made everything wonderfully organised and workable. But right now I have a hundred imaginary stacks on the floor, five hundred tangled cables, and I can’t get on because I’m looking for that one key.

“Just keep swimming!”, says Dory. I know. Slowly is also fine, although in this chaos I find it almost impossible to concentrate on developer work. I’m already on edge from everything that doesn’t work and doesn’t cooperate, and I can’t handle an uncooperative website. Before you know it, my laptop will fly out the window – and then you have that problem on top of it.

Oh well. I just hope this whole thing will be over in a while. Emigrating is not something you do every week, so eh. One day it will calm down. And then I’ll probably start a new book or something. Crazy that I am.

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