Opportunities are never lost
The past few days while on vacation, I've been thinking about the future a lot. What are my plans, what comes after teaching, and how much longer can I deal with being an ALT/GEPIK. Being in Japan has been a good reminder that I'm not nearly as stupid as I've felt lately, my Japanese coming back to me quickly enough. My new big goal is to try save enough to go to language school for a few months, and learn Japanese and Korean full time. My mom asked me "And what will you do with that?" to which I have no concrete answer, but I know I'll make my own path.
I've been noticing people on the net lately that I really respect, because they are self made success stories. They didn't sit around, talking about what they wanted to do or complained about the lack of opportunities or the obstacles ahead. They used the Internet as what it is meant to be: the great equaliser. People know what they want to see and hear, and they'll support talent. Look at JD Relic. He started just doing English covers of k-pop, until Ryan Jhun saw his cover of Heartbreaker. JD made his own portfolio and work, and now he writes songs for SM Entertainment and UKiss. Eatyourkimchi started making videos for their parents, and now they're one of the top blogs in south Korea and it's their full time job.
The problem is, people aren't willing to put the in between work in. They don't realise there are years where people have to work full time jobs AND do their hobby as professionally as possible to make people notice. And that's what weeds out most people. Thats why I'm going to keep writing while teaching. I don't think writing is what I'll do as a career, but I will do it for now with as much professionalism as I can muster.
What I really want to do is make music videos and get into producing. I'd like to work with Japanese and Korean artists, hence the want to reach some kind of high conversational level in both. After watching a lot of behind the scenes videos of Kpop production, I'm happy to notice music and video producers are not early 20s, but well into their 30s. I have time to make a solid name for myself. Keep writing, keep making opportunities for myself. Because, let's all be honest to ourselves: there are no opportunities for foreigners in Korea and Japan. And those that get them have worked their asses off to get noticed.
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