This whole thing sometimes feels like a rather sisyphean undertaking. Establishing oneself as a creative professional or entrepreneur is difficult enough anywhere. Doing it in a foreign country potentially introduces a number of additional difficulties on top of what one would normally face. For me, the necessary effort is more than worth it, given the difference between various potential futures differentiated only by the effort that I put in now, but I won’t pretend it isn’t a massive pain in the ass. Last time I talked some about the practical problems of transitioning to working as a full time creative professional in Japan, but today I want to get into what is often a much more serious category of complication: the gumption trap.