No Stupid Questions

I'd be fucked. I'm not succeeding in the present, I see 0 reason to believe that would be different in 1375.

I would make an IT startup.

Well, staying in the same location? I'm in the US, so... I'd probably try to get writing invented. To my knowledge, besides some of the Central American empires, there's no evidence or even claim of there having been any kind of writing or system for making information durable. I know there's a lot of clay here, I'm pretty sure we could bake clay tablets to store down information. There's also tule reeds here that were already being extensively used, and those could probably be made into a kind of paper as well. As to whether the people would accept that, I have no fucking idea at all; what we know of the California tribes suggests they were always semi-nomadic, but that's all very well into the post-contact period and much of what we know was written down by the Spanish while being the biggest bastards they possibly could to the locals. I dunno how useful record-keeping would be to a nomadic people. It's also entirely possible the people would be like "uh, yeah, we know how to write, dummy", and it was just lost in the multiple waves of pandemics.

I think probably something that -might- be achievable is figuring out glass. I'm mostly sure that if the native Americans had glass, we would have seen some sign of it in the archeological record by now. I'm sure some smarty pants is going to come along and tell me "you can't just throw sand in a kiln and make glass, you need a special kind of sand blah blah blah and here's 99 reasons why that won't work". Yeah, you're probably right, but I don't know any better, so I'd still definitely try. I also remember reading that clear glass was a thing figured out near Venice when they started adding grass ash or some shit to the sand, so I'd definitely experiment with that, too. Glass is just dead useful -and- pretty, so I'm fairly confident I'd get some acceptance that way.

I would say metal smithing, but the only metal deposits nearby that I know of are mercury and gold. You can't make nails and tools out of mercury and gold.

Also, maybe water wheels? To my knowledge, we have no record of native Americans using water wheels for work (I.e. grinding corn or acorns into flour). I think if I managed to put a basic water wheel together, I'd be pretty popular.

There's a former nunnery down the road. I suppose I'd try to join. Or maybe find a farmer who's looking for someone to look after his kids because his third wife died in childbirth.

Assuming I’m snapped back to the same part of the earth, climate-wise that’s ideal in the US PNW coming out of spring. Plenty of berries and food to forage, and I’ll probably impress the natives with my watch and well made clothes. I can probably get the native tribes to metals, and gain acceptance with my magic hand tool that will briefly shine light at night for a few weeks. I don’t know offhand where copper would be, but I know gold is in the streams, and I know how to placer mine, so I can get some electricity going with that and magnetized rocks from lava flows.

I think first contact would be the key.

I'd probably be dead in no time for a long list of reasons

First of all, nobisy would be able to understand me, as even current English would be barely recognizable by them

Then there is the issue that I'm probably at least a foot taller than most people and let's just say that "being even remotely different" back then was a good reason to be killed

Then there is the food issue. Food was scarce (hence most people being quite a bit shorter than me) so it'd be hard to keep myself fed. Clean water? Hah, good luck with that.

Then there is the issue of diseases. I probably carry shit that their bodies won't be able to handle, si being around me will likely make people sick, which in turn will get me labeled as a witch which would get me tortured and burned. Similarly but conversely, loads of diseases that were rampant back then are now gone, and likely my body is less equipped to handle that, I'd die from some disease

Ignoring all of that...

I'd probably start spreading the knowledge of democracy, and the harms of religion, and how important it is to immediately kill kings or king wannabes. I'd make a library with a vast wealth of knowledge and give access to the first country that successfully transforms itself to a representative atheist democracy with laws in place to ensure that no king, fascist, or wannabe will ever be able to rise up again.

That country would become the dominant world power within decades, spreading democracy and science over the world.

I'd go live in a cabin in the forest, again.

Well, first I'd have to learn Old English, I think. Hell, even Middle English isn't understandable.

Hopefully I could get up to speed before they locked me up, or worse.

Do my best to warn the locals of the coming invasion. Learn their language and teach them English and tell them not to trust any group of strangers who speak it.

Help improve their technology as best I can. I’m not sure how much I’d be able to improve it. At least, teach them to wear masks and wash their hands when around sick people.

I'd kill your ancestors.

Depends what clothes I'm wearing when it happens.

If I'm wearing anything that could remotely be seen as fancy back then (which I mean a lot of modern clothes could pass off as), since I'm near the ocean, I'd immediately run into the water not seeing anyone, and then pretend I'm a royal foreigner who ended up shipwrecked. Since I usually wear a watch, have a tungsten (Wolfram) crystal wedding band as well, that would help me in passing off as royalty as well. This is assuming the people helping me aren't brigands. There's things we do and know of that we take for granted that could be used to pass off as someone upper class too, like reading.

Then next steps would be to get to an aristocrats home, and eventually I'd imagine somewhere where I could work with scholars so they can teach me the language and we can work on translation so we can understand each other. Would have to be extremely careful of smallpox during all this of course.

Once we could, that's when I'd finally whip out my phone to trusted scholars and pull up my survival books, books on plumbing, etc specifically, and to explain that this is a special metal and glass book that can hold many books that's common in the land I'm from, and that I can teach them how to build them. But that we'd need to build plumbing because I'd like a shower by then.

I don't have the knowledge to survive in the 12 century so either some Native Americans find me and are kind enough to teach me to survive

Or I just die.

I'm in Japan and while I can speak modern Japanese I don't know shit about classical Japanese so I'd be screwed. I'm also not Japanese so good chance I end up getting killed or some shit