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（日本語は後に続きます）

This week I worked one and a half days, and felt that this may be the appropriate amount of work for a while.

I have been trying to find the right routine, find the best time to get up, to go to bed, and so forth, but it is still very difficult to do so. If I work for an assignment in Boston for example, I have to get up very early on that day. I am quite tired for the next two days, often stricken with dumping syndrome, and have to spend a lot of time in bed. For now I am trying to listen to my body and rest whenever I feel I need to.

I wonder why I decided to go back to work so early?

In a Boston Globe interview article, Massachusetts’s newly elected governor Deval Patrick’s wife, Diane, who is a lawyer, says that she wants keep her job in the law firm as long as possible because it helps to compartmentalize her time. She says it all. The work gives you a rhythm and dead line, you do not think about mundane things, and makes you feel efficient.

My art teacher, from whom I started taking water color lessons this year, said that she forgets how to talk if she spends too much time alone in the studio without speaking to others, and that teaching gives her a rhythm and occasions to talk.

The hardest time in my life was the year following 9/11, 2001. The interpretation work suddenly stopped coming in, because the Japanese government instructed companies not to send the workers overseas unless deemed critical. Then, the SARS hysteria followed, and people remained skeptical about overseas trips. Fortunately, my children were in high school then, and I had a reason to get up every morning. Also, it gave me time to help my oldest son, then a senior, to prepare applications for colleges, while helping my second son to lose weight by preparing special diet. However, I still remember the empty and depressing feeling I felt that year. I missed the challenge of the work, the satisfying feeling that you are needed, and the opportunity to contribute to the household financially.

So, it is healthy for me to go back to work, but I have to do it with moderation, and I have to learn how to say “no” to some requests. To decline a job opportunity is one of the most difficult things for a free lancer, because you fear that the client would be stolen by others if you did not seize the opportunity.

I was about to expand my business by creating my own website when the cancer struck me last year. I was collecting testimonials from my clients about the quality of my works to include on my site. At least, I will not upload the website for a while.