How I’m Preparing Otaku Journalist For 2017

Have you read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing? Marie Kondo’s bestseller can be a little woo woo at times (and here I’m thinking of her encouragement to greet and thank your belongings), but it’s also seriously helpful. I’m a few years late to the game, but I caught up quickly. Since reading about the KonMari method, I’ve gotten rid of eight bags of stuff, from books crammed onto my shelves and never read, to faded clothes with holes in them that were somehow “still OK,” to bizarre mementos I kept “for posterity,” like a stack of love letters from my high school boyfriend.

Actually, since dumping all that stuff off in the trash (and the recycling, and the local library, and eBay, and Goodwill—because the hardest part of minimalism is getting rid of your stuff in a responsible way), I’ve almost warmed up to her spiritual connection with stuff. Now, John and I will never be true minimalists because we love our anime, boardgames, and Gunpla collections too much, but I wish I could show you how much better it looks already. Now that I’ve gotten rid of all the stuff I was storing, I can better appreciate the stuff I was actually using. My desk holds nothing but my laptop, my herb plants, and a lamp. My favorite candle is at my bedside, ready to be lit for late night writing ambiance. My Japanese textbooks have their own shelf.

And like Kondo promised, I find myself being more productive without so much stimulation in one place. Without all of the stuff that no longer served me, and the weight of past memories that it carried, I find myself readier than ever to face the future. With my space emptier, I am more inclined to create new things in my life. For me, that means to write new things—articles and stories and tutorials and code—since I will never not be tethered to my computer.

But it wasn’t until the other day that I realized that what I’ve done with my physical space, I could do with Otaku Journalist, too. It started when I got a comment on a post I wrote in 2010. It was about my birthday party at a sushi restaurant, which some longtime readers probably don’t even remember because it wasn’t that significant. The commenter observed that I wasn’t wearing my yukata properly and that it could be perceived as offensive. It was a very polite comment. But all I could think was, “I don’t deserve this comment. I haven’t even worn that yukata in years!”

I started scrolling through some other posts from around that time. All I could think was, I’ve changed a lot. Looking back, some were a bit offensive, like a post I wrote about why it’s OK to make fun of Juggalo fandom because “parody isn’t trolling.” Others were simply surface level, like a very vague overview of my research on journalism in Japan. My mission statement says this blog helps aspiring niche reporters come into their own but these were anything but helpful. Most of my my older posts simply don’t meet my standards for Otaku Journalist today.

When I started blogging, you simply didn’t delete posts from the past. It was taken for granted that bloggers would improve over time and cringe at old posts, but that it didn’t matter. After all, somebody has to preserve those posts for posterity and see how far you’ve come, right? Now, I can imagine just how deeply Marie Kondo would disprove of this sentiment.

I can’t bring myself to delete even my most boring old posts. So I began setting them to private. When I started, I had 700 posts on Otaku Journalist. I hid more than 200, and I’m still going.

Some like “New Year’s Resolution: Be More Weeaboo” were easy deletions. Some I really wrestled with. This post referring to a group of crossdressers I interviewed as “traps,” for example, that I ultimately decided to keep. Traps is a really offensive term, but it was how these fans introduced themselves to me. It’s unlikely they would today.

Now, I know it seems like I’m getting rid of this stuff because of my own vanity. Getting rid of my physical stuff was about removing things from my life that don’t serve me anymore. But in this case, I’m getting rid of stuff that no longer serves my readers. And by untying these weights to the past, I can move forward. Some of these 2010 posts that I now think were vague and badly written actually contained some awesome ideas, so I’ll be rewriting them—some as posts, one as a new mailing list course, maybe another as a book. Eventually, I forsee The 2016 Purge as leading to a lot more—and more useful—posts for you. Maybe new offerings, too. I also hope to make it easier for you to search the site and find what’s useful for you.

One last thing: in a June 21, 2010 blog post, I was already unsure about the direction I was taking Otaku Journalist: “I am also having a bit of a crisis with what this blog is about. Purely work? More critical analyses of fandom? Should I take a local angle? Are personal posts (like this one) too boring?” People change, and blogs do, too.

Curious about what stayed? Here are some super old posts I didn’t remove:

P.S. While I was at it, I also built or revamped three of my pages—Start Here, About Me, and Web Design. Let me know what you think!

Photo by William Iven

How I’m Preparing Otaku Journalist For 2017

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