The Crisis

What am I doing? It’s a question I find increasingly difficult to answer.

Since I started this project, which has taken the form of One Daily Tale, it’s the first time I’m writing in French, my native language, but which I only practice sporadically since I expatriated to Japan.

I’m writing on my keyboard, bought in Japan, so in Japanese, and I type the keys thanks to my memories of their placement on the French keyboard. The spell checker helps a lot…

Why suddenly write in French? And why now?

Why in French? Because even though I write One Daily Tale in English, for “practical” reasons, French is the language I use to communicate with the people who know me best. It was while writing a message to a friend living in France that I decided to write here, rather than send him another long text, which, on one hand, would make him uncomfortable, and on the other, would make me uncomfortable too—not at the moment of writing it, but right when I hit the Send button. And then I’d think it wasn’t worth sending such a message.

I think this is called a midlife crisis, and if my 40th birthday is just a few weeks away, I am right in the middle of it.

I live in Japan, and I am married to a Japanese woman. I’ve been unemployed for almost three months now due to an economic layoff: the Japanese branch of the American high-end road bike brand I worked for has closed. The Japanese market is—obviously?—different from other regions of the world, but there was a desire to align the sales strategy across all markets. On top of that, the results had been in the red for several years already.

I was the IT specialist for this branch, where I worked for almost exactly six years. We were about twenty employees. Since the headquarters were in the United States, many employees were able to understand English, and the corporate culture itself wasn’t at all the “standards” of a purely Japanese company. The fact that we were selling road bikes was also quite important in the cultural difference: the intrinsic freedom associated with this sport, the desire to “democratize” its use through marketing, the monthly group rides for employees who wanted and could participate, during working hours!

Finding such a work environment again is obviously difficult, but to be more honest, finding a job now that my mindset has evolved so much is even harder. It has been almost a year since my first self-questioning began after many years.

I already keep a personal journal, but I like to believe that my way of thinking is different from the general mindset.