2018 Was a Year Focused on Achieving Results
（日本語版あり）
Below is the letter that I enclosed in this year’s Christmas cards.
Perhaps because I spent most of 2017 thinking about time and how there is never enough of it, I dedicated 2018 to making the most of my limited time seeking to accomplish something new and concrete outside of my day job.
For the longest time I’d wanted to teach U.S. Constitutional Law because I never lost the passion that got me to law school. But my career to date has had very little to do with the Constitution, so it always seemed like a bit of a hurdle to achieve this goal, much less in Japan.
My commitment this year meant giving it a try, though, so I reached out to a lawyer acquaintance who may be able to assist, who introduced me to another person, who introduced me to another, and just like that, I secured a position as an Adjunct Professor of Constitutional Law at Temple University’s School of Law in Tokyo for the Spring 2019 semester.
That’s not all. Temple University separately asked me to give a presentation on contracting in cloud computing, regarding which I’m quite familiar from my day job. Then a Japanese lawyer friend asked me to give a lecture to the Tokyo Bar Association regarding the U.S. Constitution, which I did in September.
All this coming together was a lesson in how you really can’t predict life. After some initiative and much luck, not only did I obtain a position that I had always hoped for, but I also achieved numerous other opportunities in ways I never could have imagined. Life is funny like that.
Unfortunately, in the area of Japanese chess, or shogias it’s called, it was same old, same old.
Much like in western chess, there is a ranking system in shogi. I’m a sixth kyu rank, which isn’t very high, and I’ve been trying for over three years to move up, with very little success.
To reach fifth kyu this year, I doubled down on the time I spend on shogi by studying more books and playing more frequently, but to the surprise of no one, I failed to advance.
This got me thinking about the meaning of effort. I expended a lot of it on the presentation at Temple and the lecture for the Tokyo Bar Association, but I ended up with something concrete to show for that. Then what about with shogi? Will there ever come a time when the effort will be rewarded? Or will it turn into a life lesson about how not all effort will bear fruit?
Regarding this, I’ve always taken the view that there’s no such thing as a wasted effort. I’m not naïve enough to believe that all effort will result in accomplishments, but I do believe that there’s always something to be gained from whatever I put my effort into, often in unexpected ways and even if the end result is not something that I had hoped for.
Of course, all this contemplation doesn’t change the fact that next year, as every year, I hope to be able to report that I’ve achieved fifth kyu in shogi.
I wish you a Merry Christmas, and may your 2019 be full of satisfaction.
