Like all entitled, white, recently graduated 20-somethings, I was perfectly happy to delay figuring out where my life was going for as long as humanly possible, convinced that if I were to actually try for a few minutes, jobs would rain down like manna from heaven.

Turns out that I was wrong. They don’t.

30 seconds after signing the “I’d like to go home now” documents, watching the ink dry, it began to occur to me that 3 years living in the most isolated, god-forsaken (albeit gorgeous and pretty awesome) chunk of land in all of Japan had done a pretty poor job of preparing me to do anything except chat up toothless old men and get repeatedly punched in the dick by excited 6-year-olds. While I’m I’m sure there is a career in there somewhere, possible connected to a very specific fetish found only in Japan, It’s not exactly how I imagined making my rice money.

It turns out that no matter what you do, you’re probably going to have to work yourself into an emaciated heap of bones to get it. There is, in the words of the crotchety Economics saints of yesteryear, no such thing as a free lunch. So if I’m going to have to work hard as balls at it anyway, I sure as shit am going to do something I love.

My name is Adam Golder. And I’m a writer.

Even if it kills me.