Another Path

I didn’t think I’d be making a Japanese learning app when I arrived in Japan. My husband had gotten a job teaching English at a Japanese high school, and I quit my full-time software engineering job to come along, figuring I’d finally give myself the time to start my life as an indie videogame developer.

It was a disaster. I had made small games in the past, and even published them, but trying to do it day-in, day-out made me realize that I didn’t actually enjoy designing games as much as I liked programming them. And it turns out, with modern game engines, the programming was a relatively small part of the process.

So I was alone every day in a new country, depressed, and failing at what I had believed for years was my passion.

Nihongo was a huge factor in pulling me out of that hole. It was something I desperately wanted for myself, it was something that felt meaningful to the world, and it kept me busy with plenty of interesting engineering and intellectual challenges. It turned out that I needed to sink into that hole first so that I could figure out what I was really passionate about.