Wandering and Wondering

Here comes day 2. The reason I want to take on this challenge, as I said before, is to hone my craft as a writer. A good translator needs to be able to write in his own voice - this serves to make the translation more natural, and also to differentiate his work from that of others. To get there, to find my own voice, I need to practice. I imagine it's a bit like sculpting: with each post, I'm chiseling away extraneous bits to reveal the sculpture beneath, one that bears my identity. Hopefully, after 31 days of at least 500 words, or at least 15,500 words, I can find that voice, or get closer to it. A necessary skill of any freelancer is being able to find the time. I'm constantly challenged to find time to do anything other than spending time with my two children. From chores around the apartment to exercising, from sleep to work, I'm always trying to scrape together some time, or steal some here and there, to get these things done. My wife and I have managed to sc...

I am announcing here and right now that I'm starting this challenge: to write at least 500 words for 31 (and hopefully more) days. I am one day late though; it's day 2 today and I'm specifically told not to play catch up, but hey, it's MY 500 words right? I'll just do this whole thing shifted by one day. The point of announcing this publicly is to have some sort of accountability, a bit a pressure to get me to stick to it. I am painfully aware that this post will most likely only get 10 pageviews. Better than nothing though right? This is one of those resolutions that is bound to fail, like one of Brad Pitt's marriages. I've been meaning to write more for a while, (like, a whole decade) and, with the exception of the first year of fatherhood, when I blogged nearly once a week, I have not been successful at all. I wrote a total of 2 blog posts last year and I'm hoping to eclipse that number by the end of the week. This year I'm gonna give this co...

A little more than an hour left in 2017, and I am sitting at home in front of my computer typing away. My son's asleep, and A is busy putting the little one to sleep. No exciting countdown for us, out with a crowd. But such is life with 2 kids of ages less than the digits on a single hand when added together. Without thinking too hard, this year seemed like any other: uneventful. But after browsing through my photos, I realized has actually been quite a year. I took my first trip back to Vancouver in nearly a decade (also A and T's first trip). We moved in the middle of the year in a rush because of a bad leak in the old apartment. And last but not least, my daughter was born. T also turned 3 this year, as we've moved past the terrible 2s into the *drum rolls* test-your-limit threes. Work has also been slowly moving in an upward trajectory, which is always a good thing, although I've had a hard time balancing work and family. My goals for next year, the same unattai...

I should just start writing. I’ve been meaning to start blogging again, as a way to hone my writing skills. I figure even without feedback, the act of writing itself should help. At the very least, I can read my own words and see if they turn out weird. I don’t lack the chance to type words onto a file, being a translator, but I rarely have the opportunity to write in my own voice. My self-imposed paternity leave was supposed to be the chance for me to work on my writing, to read, and to do chores around the apartment. Instead, aside from a couple translation cases, the only thing I’ve done that’s remotely productive is watching  Stranger Things and  13 Reasons Why  on Netflix. (Productive because at least I’m watching a story. Very remotely, I know.) The problem with blogging is I don’t have anything worth blogging about that may be of interest to anyone other than myself. My life is occupied by my family, household chores, and work. (Yet despite the above, my son d...