[Self-Introduction] An ordinary office worker increasing life's breathing room through trial and error

Nice to meet you. I am howrass.
I am a 41-year-old office worker living with my wife and two daughters.

Work, go home, spend time with the kids, and then go back to work the next day.

In the midst of such daily life, I sometimes find myself thinking.

“Couldn't I live a life with a little less stress?”
“Couldn't I reduce my anxiety about future finances and choose a way of working that suits me?”
“Couldn't I value time with my family instead of just being chased by work?”
“Couldn't I challenge myself to do what I want without using age or time as an excuse?”

This note is a place to record the process of an ordinary office worker with such worries gradually increasing the breathing room in their finances, time, and heart.

I am neither a business owner who has achieved great success nor someone who has achieved FIRE by quitting their job to become free.

While working as an office worker, I am challenging myself with investing, side hustles, AI utilization, app development, and child-rearing.

Not just stories of what went well, but

“Why did I fail?”
“What was I thinking at that time?”
“How do I intend to improve next time?”

I am keeping the process as realistic as possible, including these aspects.

There are three main themes covered in this note.

1. Increasing financial breathing room

I write about investing, asset formation, reviewing household finances, side hustles on note, and future ways of working.

This is not a place to introduce ways for anyone to easily earn money or turn their life around in a short period.

How can an ordinary office worker gradually increase their breathing room in finances, time, and heart within limited income and time? I record what I have tried, what I was confused about, and what I failed at in that process.

In investing, I write about how I thought about industry demand and corporate future prospects while actually investing my own money. Articles about investing and money have been featured on note money multiple times.

However, investing is not the only way to build assets.

Reviewing fixed costs and daily expenses. Challenging myself with side hustles using note and AI while working as an office worker. I believe that thinking about what kind of life I want to lead in the future, rather than just continuing my current way of working, is also part of asset formation.

Not just the amount of profit or income, but why I started it. Where I felt the potential. What kind of anxieties I had. What didn't go well, and what I learned from it.

I value the process of an ordinary office worker gradually increasing their future options while reviewing their household finances, investments, side hustles, and way of working.

Click here for my featured article on money and future ways of working.

2. Increasing breathing room in time

I think about how to use limited time through AI, apps, and work efficiency.

It's not just about speeding up tasks.
It's about what to reduce and what to spend time on.

As an office worker raising two children, I think about how to create time for my family and time for my own challenges.

Precisely because I am an ordinary office worker, I am serious about how I spend my time.

I am challenging myself not only with writing and organizing information using AI like ChatGPT and Claude, but also with image generation, music production, and app development.

As someone who is not an expert, I use the power of AI to give shape to things that would have otherwise just remained ideas.

I also document that trial and error here on note.

Click here for my featured article on AI and time management.

3. Increasing breathing room in the mind

I write about how to face work, family, relationships, and myself.

Even if you have money, you won't have peace of mind if you don't have time.

Even if you have time, you can't enjoy it if your mind is exhausted.

Conversely, even if you try to calm your mind, I think it is difficult to live peacefully if you have strong anxiety about future money or if your time continues to be taken away by work.

Recently, I have been thinking about how to incorporate ideas such as Adlerian psychology into actual life.

Rather than just introducing the contents of books,

I dig deep into questions like,
'Can this really be used at home?'
'How should I think when something unpleasant happens at work?''Why can't I put it into practice even if I understand it in my head?'

I delve into these aspects.

Click here for my featured article that expresses my thoughts on the mind and values.

Margin in money, margin in time, margin in heart.

These three are not separate issues.

If you don't have financial margin, your anxiety about the future grows.
If you don't have time margin, you lose the time to spend on your family and yourself.
If you don't have emotional margin, even if you have money and time, you cannot fully enjoy them.

That is why I consider these three together as "life's margin."

So, why did I start writing about life's margin?

From here on, I will write about the failures I have experienced in my life so far and the events that changed my way of thinking.

4. A childhood where I was not good at interacting with people

According to my parents, I hardly spoke a word until I was about three years old.

In my own memory, even in kindergarten, I didn't know how to interact with people.

Even when the children around me were playing happily, I didn't know how to join their circle.

Until the lower grades of elementary school, I had almost no friends.

Due to allergies, the area around my lips would turn bright red, and I was teased for having "cod roe lips." Around the fourth grade of elementary school, I also experienced light bullying.

There was something that I, such a person, was able to get absorbed in for the first time.

The recorder.

I wanted to be able to play the songs I admired, so I practiced almost every day.

Then, little by little in music class,

"That guy seems to be good at the recorder"

an atmosphere like that was born.

The recorder connected me with people, even though I had almost no connection with those around me until then.

From around the fifth grade of elementary school, my friends increased, and in junior high school, I joined the brass band and also served as the class president.

If you have even one thing you are passionate about and can do a little better than others, the way you see yourself and your relationships with those around you will change.

That was when I thought that life could be changed through effort.

However, that confidence did not last long.

5. There were things that could not be changed even with effort

By the time I reached high school, I began to be strongly self-conscious about my short stature.

My current height is 163 centimeters.

Confiding in my parents about my worry regarding wanting to grow taller took a lot of courage for me at the time.

Despite my parents' opposition, I begged them and got them to pay for a height-increasing method that incorporated yoga.

I hung from a horizontal bar, pulled my legs with rubber bands, and tried everything I could.

Even so, I did not grow taller.

On the contrary, I hurt my neck from excessive exercise, and only chronic stiffness remained.

I could improve at the recorder if I practiced, though.

Even after all this effort, it did not pay off.

My height would not grow anymore.

I could not accept that fact.

"There's no point in trying anymore."

I had become reckless about everything else as well.

During my university years, my inferiority complex grew even stronger, and I began to think,

"My life is on hard mode. So, if things don't go well, it's not my fault."

Blaming society. Blaming the environment. Blaming my parents.

I used to blame all my misfortunes on other people and my environment.

I also became afraid of being judged by others.
I couldn't even talk to women.

I thought it was better not to try at all than to work and be thought of as a 'useless person.' During college, I was too scared to even have a part-time job.

I thought it was better not to speak at all than to speak and be told that I was 'hated.'

Thinking this way, I gradually began to protect myself by doing nothing. At the time, this was the only way I could think of to escape from self-loathing.

I entered the workforce while in that state.

6. Learning independence for the first time in the dead of winter in Aomori

After graduating from university, I joined an outsourcing company that dispatches engineers to corporations. I didn't have any special expertise, and I think I was helped by the fact that they just needed manpower.

I was dispatched to a major plant company, where I was surrounded by engineers with far more knowledge and experience than me.

I can only describe this as good luck for my life.

Rational thinking
Depth of knowledge
Methods for organizing problems
Basis for judgment
Sense of responsibility for work

Watching the backs of my first-class seniors, I learned my job little by little.

A major turning point was a six-month on-site assignment that began in the dead of winter in Aomori.
I was put in charge of equipment test runs, but everything was new to me.

A land where I knew no one.

Outside, it was a blizzard and freezing cold.

The anxiety of whether I could really make the test run a success.

For the first time, I realized how peaceful and blessed my past, which I had thought was so painful, actually was.

I also deeply understood the gratitude I owed my parents, who supported me even when I was so rebellious. Is loneliness really this painful?
That was the first time I felt it keenly.

At the beginning of my assignment, I would cry alone in my room, filled with a mix of loneliness, anxiety, and gratitude.

At first, I was afraid to even open or close a valve, or even to drive a car.

Even so, I gradually became accustomed to both the site and the land.

By around summer, I had enough leeway to go on long-distance drives on my days off and sightsee in Aomori. It was around this time that I learned the joy of being able to do a little more each day.

I worked hard, stopped by a hot spring on the way home, and treated myself to a delicious meal. Because I worked so hard, I could truly enjoy my time off and my time for rest.

I learned with my body what I had only understood in my head until then.

I didn't run away from the work I was entrusted with and kept at it. When I finished my assignment at the site and returned home, for the first time, I clearly felt,

"I have become independent."

I felt that way.

However, even though I gained some confidence in my work, many more failures awaited me in money and love.

7. I lost about 1.5 million yen in FX trading

When I was 28, I aimed to make a fortune through FX trading.

Buy when the exchange rate drops, sell when it rises. I thought it was a simple game. In fact, if you look only at the number of trades, I think I won more often than I lost.

However, when I held a large unrealized loss from a single trade, I couldn't bring myself to admit defeat.

"Maybe it will recover if I wait a little longer."

While I was thinking that, the losses kept ballooning.

The total amount I eventually lost in FX was about 1.5 million yen.

I wasn't investing back then.

I was just waiting for the market to give me the result that my judgment had been correct.

From this failure, I came to think that the method of looking at charts and trying to guess short-term price movements was not for me.

Instead, I felt it suited me better to research fields and companies with growing demand and invest in their long-term growth.

With that in mind, I started index investing in things like the S&P 500 and investing in individual stocks.

Following my failure in FX trading, my relationship with money began to change little by little.

To build up investment capital, I also reviewed my household finances. Since it was difficult to increase my income at the time, I started by reducing my expenses.

In that way, I gradually accumulated assets.

The next thing I had to face was the inferiority complex I had avoided for many years.

8. I started marriage hunting without confidence

Even at 30, I had no confidence as a man.

My short stature was, for me at the time, the very embodiment of the inferiority complex I had carried for years.

During my college years, when I suffered from severe social anxiety, I felt that interacting with women was scary in itself.

Even so, I realized that unless I faced this inferiority complex, the heavy shackles would never come off.

Thinking this, I started marriage hunting at a marriage agency.
Of course, it did not go smoothly.
I met many women, and many connections ended.

Was marriage impossible for me?
Just as I was about to despair, I met my current wife.

I did not start marriage hunting after I had gained confidence.

I believe that experience was born after I took action, and through that experience, I gradually gained confidence.

Neither work nor marriage changed just by waiting.
On the other hand, taking action does not necessarily mean the situation will improve.

I chose to make another major change in my environment.

9. I changed jobs, and my previous experience no longer applied

In 2020, feeling anxious about my future as a temporary employee, I changed jobs to become a full-time employee at a company that handles water treatment equipment.

However, at the new workplace, the way work was carried out was significantly different from what I was used to.

I had to make on-the-spot decisions for a wide range of tasks, from design to procurement, construction, safety management, and customer service.

It was a situation where the systems were not fully established, and things were being managed somehow through individual effort.
That is how the workplace looked to me.

The experience I had built up in my previous job was almost useless.
There were unreasonable demands and words and actions that I felt were power harassment at the time,
and I was mentally wearing down.

In the midst of this, my eldest daughter was born in December 2021, and I took childcare leave.
By stepping away from work, my mental state gradually recovered.

At the same time, a single question became stronger.

"Is it really okay to keep working while relying solely on the company like this?"

Driven by that question, I started looking for a side job.

10. The sense of discomfort I felt about earning money after paying 300,000 yen

During my childcare leave in 2022, 'sedori' (reselling) was popular, where people would use point rewards on sites like Rakuten Ichiba to purchase products cheaply and then sell them on Amazon to make a profit.

I also tried selling on Amazon, but it was very time-consuming, and I didn't feel like I wanted to continue it for a long time.

Isn't there a more efficient way?
Thinking that, I made up my mind and paid 300,000 yen for an information product.
However, what I saw in the LINE group for communication was different from what I had expected.

"This Pokémon card is trending. I'm going to drive a wagon to Hokkaido right now to go buy some."

Along with posts like that, there were photos of products piled up in the back of a car.

Isn't this just scalping?
Isn't it because of people like this that people who really want the items can't buy them?
Am I going to become one of these people to earn money?

I felt a strong sense of disgust.

I don't think earning money itself is bad.

However, I could not at all agree with the values that shared actions close to bulk buying or hoarding as success stories.

Money should be the reward for the value you provide to someone or for their gratitude.

That idea became clear to me from around this time.

In the end, our values didn't align, and I quit reselling.

I also learned a little programming, but it didn't become a skill strong enough to earn income during my childcare leave. However, the experience I touched upon at this time became the foundation for me to start using Claude Code without resistance later on.

I tried to somehow achieve results during my childcare leave, but my side job didn't go well.

Work after changing jobs is also painful.

And at home, I was overlooking what was truly important.

11. My eldest daughter did not run to me

After returning from childcare leave, I was transferred to my current department.

Although the atmosphere is better than before, the scope of work is broad, and I have had busy days ever since.

It is not that I had absolutely no time to interact with my eldest daughter, who was one year old at the time.

However, even on my days off, I lacked peace of mind, and I used work as an excuse to avoid engaging with her deeply.

In the midst of this, there was a race at a nursery school event where children had to run toward their fathers.

The children around me were running happily toward their fathers.

However, my eldest daughter did not come to me proactively.

At that moment, I was deeply shocked, wondering if I hadn't been interacting with her enough. My wife had also expressed dissatisfaction with how I was interacting with our eldest daughter.

My side job didn't go well.
Although my salary increased after changing jobs, my time at home decreased.
There is no guarantee that the situation will improve if I change jobs again.

I have to do something, or I'm in trouble.

Thinking this, I read through books on business, Buddhism, and success principles.
I even made a list of the know-how I learned and read it out loud every morning.
Immediately after doing so, I felt somewhat positive.

However, after a while, I would return to my original way of thinking.

Even though I know the know-how, why can't I change?

It was in that dead end that I encountered a book called "The Courage to Be Disliked," which deals with Adlerian psychology.

At first, I could barely understand it.
I gave up many times, reread it over several years, and before I knew it, I had read it about 15 times.

Why can't people change?
How should one be as a person?
What kind of life is happiness?

When I gradually understood those values, I realized that the business books, Buddhism, and success principle know-how I had read until then were all connected at the root.

Know-how is merely the branches and leaves.
If the values at the root do not change, life will simply return to how it was.

Since realizing this, I have been less swayed by dissatisfaction with work and the eyes of others.

My relationship with my family has also changed little by little.

Now, I have a relationship with my eldest daughter where we acknowledge each other's existence every day by saying, 'Thank you' and 'I love you.'

Around the time my way of facing my heart changed, new technology began to greatly expand my range of action.

12. AI has reduced the reasons for giving up

I started using ChatGPT around 2024.

At the time, I was moved just by the fact that it would return answers to my questions.

On the other hand, the answers were sloppy and often incorrect, and image generation could not be called practical.

Even so, the experience of actually using AI became a catalyst for me to think about the future potential of AI-related companies, starting with Nvidia. As a result, I was blessed with a favorable market environment, and I was able to advance my asset formation in terms of investment as well.

I believe it was a change I could notice precisely because I was exposed to new technology and kept my own antenna up.

From around the winter of 2025, I felt that the accuracy of ChatGPT's answers had improved significantly.

In 2026, I started using Claude Code, paying $100 a month as an investment in myself.

Writing, information organization, images, music, programming, app development.

Things that were difficult without specialized knowledge until now have become things that even an ordinary office worker can give shape to.

'I don't have time'
'I'm not an expert'
'It's too late to start now'

AI has gradually reduced the things I used as reasons to give up until now.

On the other hand, in my main job, I still face unfamiliar tasks and sometimes have to be taught by younger colleagues. While there is a path to continue working as an office worker, I have come to think that I want to get closer to a state where I can choose my own future way of working through side jobs and asset formation.

Let's try a side job once more.

Thinking that, I started on note in May 2026.

13. What I want to deliver through this note

I do have a desire to earn income as a side hustle.

However, I want that income to be earned as a result of delivering value to others.

That is why I want to compete with the content of my articles, rather than unnecessarily stoking anxiety or pushing through with aggressive sales talk.

I have not walked through life efficiently from the very beginning.

I was not good at interacting with people.
There was a time when I couldn't challenge myself at all due to feelings of inferiority.
I lost about 1.5 million yen in FX, and I also failed at a side hustle for which I paid 300,000 yen.
At a new job, I experienced the pain of my previous experience not being applicable.
I have also nearly lost sight of how to relate to my family.

Even so, I believe that by focusing on what I can change and taking small actions, life can be changed little by little.

That is what I think.

In this note, I will write about what an ordinary office worker like me has actually tried in order to increase the margin in money, time, and heart.

I will record not only the successful results, but also the things I was confused about, the things I failed at, and how I rethought things from there.

For those who don't want to end their day with just work.
For those who want to gradually reduce their anxiety about money.
For those who want to cherish their family while not giving up on their own potential.

I would be happy if there is even one thing that can be a reference for such people.

And through this note, I hope that one day my daughters will read about what their father was thinking, what he was confused about, and how he was trying to live.

Thank you for your support.

*Updated July 12, 2026

#SelfIntroduction
#OfficeWorker
#ChildRearing
#Investment
#AssetFormation
#SideHustle
#AIUtilization
#AdlerianPsychology