2018: The Year of Stagnation

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.

Light at the End of Purgatory

Life is all about balance. Too much of any one thing, and that will most likely have negative consequences. For me, I have had an imbalance of time spent in my house since I decided to try and break out of the teaching industry earlier this year. I have floated about, not accomplishing much by my own metric. In a little under two weeks, I will start a new teaching job that I am relatively excited for, which will hopefully break up my daily cycle and give me feelings of satisfaction once again.

As I wrote in an earlier post, I was immensely dissatisfied with teaching earlier this year. I felt like I wasn’t being fulfilled by it, and I decided to try my hand at video game testing and the games industry as a whole. I studied for and obtained a software testing certification, and despite my best efforts, I just simply couldn’t find my place. I do not speak enough Korean to be employable at a Korean-speaking company, and the handful of English-focused companies didn’t want me either. This was an immense blow to my self-confidence, and after a little under two months of unsuccessfully trawling job boards, I gave up and settled in for a little over a month of self-hatred and wallowing in my own incompetence. When asked about it, I would express chipperness and resolve, but inside I was broken.

I spent the next few months in this state, always hoping that something would magically come my way. I had a potential prospect that was continually being delayed and pushed back, and I kept waiting for it for far longer than I should have. I was so focused on the possibility of that position that I believed that I was unworthy of anything else. But, after the umpteenth delay, I resolved that I needed to find a job, to contribute to the household that Kris and I had built once again. Kris was remarkably understanding during this period and never gave up on me. I had to pay her back.

As it happened, the day that I found out about the delay that broke my resolve for the previous position, a friend of mine posted on Facebook looking for a replacement at his school. I had experience with the school and knew that it would be a job that would give me a combination of income, good working conditions, and enough time outside of work to pursue my passions on the side. The hours were short, there was a vast amount of vacation, and I knew that the kids were generally well-behaved. So, I messaged my friend and applied for the job. After a couple of interviews, I was told that the school wanted to hire me. I was ecstatic.

I am currently jumping through a couple of immigration-related hoops, but if it all goes smoothly, I should start there on the 8th of November. I am looking forward to having gainful employment again. I go into the position well aware of my previous disillusionment, but with a new resolve to make the most out of my time. Even if it is nothing more than the means to which I continue my time in Korea, that will be more than worth it. Here’s to living the expat life until November 2019 at least!

Featured image from kireiaoshinari00 on DeviantArt

Stifling Myself

Normally when I’ve had a long break between posts on here, I’ve been incredibly busy doing something like visiting another country, playing Ultimate, or just working hard at whatever teaching job I’ve had. That’s not the case this time. There haven’t been external factors preventing me from sitting down at the keyboard to type up a few words to share with all of you. There has only been one obstacle: my own fear, anxiety, laziness, and perfectionism.

In the time since I last wrote here, I have been entirely unemployed. I haven’t had a job to fill my time. I decided to try and strike away from teaching and get a job in the field I have skated alongside the edge of for years – the games industry.

I spent two months studying for a software testing certification. I was going to write a post about that, sharing my feelings of anxiety about the test. I chose not to write anything until after I passed or failed the test. I ended up passing the test comfortably. I was going to write the perfect post summarizing my journey. Then I thought I would wait until I actually had a job and share my happiness about that. I spent two months searching for a job. I was going to write a post about how despondent and disheartened I was becoming, but I thought that no-one would want to read such self-important garbage. People want to feel happy when they take the time away from their own busy, draining lives to read some mangled collection of words on the Internet. So I kept waiting for some positive news on the job front.

Every morning when I brushed my teeth, I would tell myself that this is the day that I would write that accursed blog post. I would find a particular angle to my experiences to try and spin it into an inspirational story about how sometimes chasing your dreams doesn’t quite work out the way that you wanted, but you learn from the experience. It would be motivational as hell. Then I would sit down at my laptop and never even open my blog. I was emotionally and creatively suffocated. In this time, I’d tell people I was funemployed, trying to change my career path. In reality, I just sat staring at translated versions of job postings, applying to any and every position I was even remotely qualified for, and many that I wasn’t. Days blurred together to the point that I would forget whether it was Monday or Wednesday. With every day that passed, it became harder to share what was happening.

All the while, I was going on miniature adventures: visiting friends across the country, exploring Seoul, completing video games, playing in Ultimate tournaments, even bonding more with my cat. I also have many events to look forward to. I’m heading back to South Africa in just over two weeks. I even have an interview for a potential position soon, and I am excited. It is partially a teaching position, and I will share more as time goes on. It has been something of a backup position for the past few months, and I am glad that it may work out. However, the knowledge of this position hasn’t changed for weeks. These experiences and anticipations were fogged by the drudgery of my job search. Not even the constant, unwavering support from my amazing wife stoked the fire of creativity within me. I felt that nothing I was doing was important or interesting enough to share. Until today.

Today, I just sat at my laptop, as I’ve done countless times in the last few months. I procrastinated, as I have so many times before. But then I actually opened my blog and started typing, like I should have months ago.  I knew it was an option but was still too caught up in myself to write. I’m not perfect. I’ve been less emotionally available in the past months than I can remember being. I’m working on it. It’s not easy. But I’m still here, and starting today, I won’t leave you in the dark, for both of our sakes.