After the whirlwind year that was 2017, I entered 2018 refreshed and with a glint of confidence in my eye. I set my energy on breaking out of the teaching cycle and getting my foot in the door of a new industry. This hopefulness slowly curdled into disappointment and self-loathing. I spent months languishing in creative and professional purgatory, and simply watched the days swirl past me as I waited for some golden opportunity that never came. Eventually, I had to return to teaching in order to sustain the household that Kris and I continued to build. It was the routine of working again, combined with finding wonder in almost every aspect of life, that helped to reignite some semblance of inspiration within me, and I enter 2019 with much of the vigor that I started the year with, even if it is tinted with more realism.
A clean break
I believed that 2018 would be the year that I managed to stop teaching and find a career in gaming. I elected not to search for a new teaching job in March, and dedicated my time to software testing. I spent three months learning all I could in the lead-up to the eventual exam. I aced the exam, and started what I thought would be a brief job search. There were so many gaming companies, and I would be a perfect fit at any of them, I thought. It turns out that this assertion could hardly have been further from reality. As a foreigner with zero functional Korean or experience in the field, I was barely a more appealing hire than a well-dressed Shiba Inu with halitosis. At least the Shiba could potentially be a company mascot, even if it did smell a bit.
The fog
Days of searching turned into weeks. I rarely received more than a polite stock rejection to any position I applied for, if I was graced with any response at all. I applied to more postings than I could remember, and I could count the number of returned contact on my fingers. Possibly even on one hand. My spirit wasn’t broken. It was led into a cell, chained to the wall, and given a daily beating every time I opened up the job boards. As the weeks turned into months, it had curled into a ball, simply too bruised to care anymore. Throughout this time, Kris remained her remarkable, supportive self. She encouraged me, and assured me that I would find a job if I just kept trying. So I did. It never came. I was emotionally and creatively void. That showed in how I was too ashamed of my situation to post on this blog for months. I was failing in achieving my dream, and I didn’t want anyone else to know.
Return to the classroom
I couldn’t evade reality forever. Our bills continued to come in, and my lack of contribution had drained almost all of our previous windfall in a leaking sieve of selfish, blind ambition. On the day in October at which I was at my lowest following one final disappointing dead end, a board gaming friend posted that his school would need someone to replace him from the beginning of November, as he was returning home on short notice. The position seemed about as good of a deal as I could have hoped for at the time. The hours were shorter than the average job, which would leave me time to pursue other professional interests. There was a good deal of vacation, to help me match my vacation time with Kris. Most importantly, the school seemed supportive of both the students’ learning and the teachers themselves. I interviewed, and for the first time in my soul-bruising searching period, I was offered the job. It was teaching, but after months of nothing, I was excited to teach again, and the income would help me continue to focus on the next step without all of the guilt surrounding not being able to contribute to our household financially.
Bonfire Lit
With each passing day of employment, I clawed back the self-worth that had been left in tatters by the failure of the rest of the year. As I began to think of myself in a light other than a grey, faded hue, I realized an unintended casualty of my emotional self-mutilation – I had lost my sense of wonder. No matter what I experienced, I could find little to no magic or marvel in it. Before 2018, I could find a sprinkle of fairy dust in the most mundane of experiences, but my eyes had been glazed over by disappointment. Thankfully, as I regained positive opinions of myself, I began to see the wonder in the world again. I was also fortunate enough to be presented with innately wondrous experiences in all spheres of my life, from the life-affirming album ‘A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships’ by The 1975, playing Dark Souls for the first time, reading novels again after many months, spending more time with friends that look at the world from different angles to me and show me where they find happiness therein, and exploring more of Seoul and seeing the little wrinkles of joy that I had previously ignored. I played on arguably the most fun Ultimate teams I’ve ever played on, and they filled me with happiness even in the darkest of times. It is these renewed connections to the fantastical that I take with me into the year ahead.
Reflecting on a year where you spent the majority of it in isolated, unvoiced disillusionment is not an easy thing. I disappointed myself a great deal this year. I made more mistakes than I ever want to make in a year going forward. I hated myself more than I ever want to hate myself again. I am lucky that I could afford to have as awful a year as I did. Without my amazing wife supporting me in almost every way, I would not have been able to come out of this year remotely near being optimistic and able to see joy in the world, and for that I will be eternally grateful. My wonderful friends also managed to pull me out of my own negative world more often than I thought possible. 2019 will be a better year. I am filled with determination. Happy new year, everyone! I hope that your 2018s were better than mine, and that you never lose your ability to see the little miracles all around you.
All images in this piece by @mmingran.