For several years I've struggled to learn enough Japanese for daily living. (Spouse is Japanese and we moved to Japan a few years ago with our 3 school-aged kids). Very little success on this. しょうがないね
My wife is out of town anywhere between 3 days to 2 weeks each month for her job. While she is gone, we rely heavily on her parents (with whom I cannot communicate directly). They take care of laundry and dinner for the kids. I take care of all the other housework and breakfast.
I work at a large corp (English speaking technology department, Japanese company) with very little career progression without business-level Japanese skill. My dev skills feel rusted and I try not to despair about my career.
So what do you do? Do you double down on Japanese and try to get some level of fluency and let your dev skill rot? Or do you focus on polishing those dev skills and push the language learning back even farther? You get maybe an hour a day for this purpose.
Unfortunately I own a house where the mortgage exceeds the value of the property. So I am not in a position to move to greener pastures.
As an added bonus, I've hit mid-forty now and my body is starting to go. Exercise and diet help, but ifaik there is no cure for aging/degrading biologic systems.
...
But here's the thing: As a man -- and especially as a white, English-speaking, North American man -- nobody gives a shit about my problems. Sure, family and old friends care that I have troubles, but from the perspective that they hope the problems go away. (to be clear, I mean this as a general case, not specific to this country)
I painting myself into a corner, and just have to keep working to make things better.
It's simple, but not easy -> Keep working hard. Do whatever you can to improve yourself and your situation. Ask for help when you can. Don't complain.
---
Edit to add:
Thank you everyone for your kind comments. I appreciate it very much and will carefully consider your suggestions.