A new country.
Two and a half months ago, my girlfriend and I groggily stepped off a plane and onto the tarmac of a different world. 30 hours of travel altogether, from Seoul to Los Angeles to Fiji, to a city called Melbourne to start a new adventure.
We crawled into our Uber with all of the possessions we had to our names. Our friendly driver drove us through the foreign city, pointing out “the best coffee shop,” “that one pizza place I ate at,” and “this street’s clubs are so crazy, oh my God.”
Jihyun marveled with her mouth open and her face close to the window, taking in her first home outside of her mother country of South Korea. I did the same.
God, I love new cities.
Per usual, I kept my left eye glued to the map on my phone to make sure the driver wasn’t taking us for a ride.
He dropped us off in front of an old, orange apartment building. Of course, I chose an Airbnb located on the top floor with no elevator. Why wouldn’t I?
After four round trips, all of our luggage was safely inside our temporary home, and I lay on the floor, a sweaty mess. Jihyun had already pulled out her laptop to begin the one, most important task — the job that took priority before all other jobs:
Find a home.
In the middle of a fucking rental crisis.
If you’ve ever bought a one-way ticket to a foreign country without an actual place to live, you might understand the particular species of anxiety we had. Yes, Australia was going through a historic rental crisis. Simply put, there weren’t enough places to rent for everyone, especially because of the influx of international visitors after the pandemic.
You’d book an inspection to see a place, and anywhere from 30 to 50 other people were also there, desperately trying to find a place they could call home.
For weeks, Jihyun and I applied to every single place we could find, trekked across what felt like a hundred different neighborhoods of Melbourne, sweet-talked, emailed, called — the works.
We offered to pay several months of rent upfront. I wrote a full cover letter to describe what great tenants we were, making sure to highlight how petless, childless, and shoes-not-in-the-house-ish we were.
I distinctly remember the feeling of getting rejected on the phone for the place I wanted the most. A part of me felt like it was destiny to get this amazing apartment in the middle of a neighborhood that checked all the boxes we were looking for. I took the tram there twice a week, pretending the park behind the building was where I’d lay and read books.
“Sorry, no, we’ve already accepted someone else’s offer,” said the tired-sounding property manager. I probably wasn’t the first person to call.
But didn’t she understand I had already dream-claimed the place as my own?
A new home.
One day, Jihyun and I were in a neighborhood far north of the central part of Melbourne. Too far, for my taste. But desperate times called for desperate measures.
As we waited for what felt like our one-millionth inspection, we stopped at a dark souvlaki shop (like a gyro, or kebab, for the uninitiated).
Nobody was eating souvlakis. Old men smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskeys looked up from their card games suspiciously at us, but the Greek owner took to us immediately.
With a thick accent, he told us about how he’d lived in Melbourne for 30 years, how we should find an apartment on his street. “It’s cheap! What else do you need? Eat souvlaki every day!”
My phone started buzzing. Although most of the calls I got these days were from unknown Australian numbers, it was a nice change of pace from aggressive Korean salespeople calling me.
I jogged outside to take the call.
“[Something something]…your application for Richmond…[something something]…owner. Sound good?” said the real estate agent.
“Ah…yeah. Sure, send it in.”
I didn’t really know what he was saying. Maybe just telling me that my application was received for a certain apartment. Richmond was an area that was near the top of our list. As a matter of fact, it was where our Airbnb was located, so it already kind of felt like home to us. But we had applied to several spots in the area, and several more elsewhere.
“Well, congratulations then! I’ll send over the paperwork and you can pick up the keys on Tuesday.”
I snapped back out of my souvlaki-induced daze.
“Wait, what? Did we…we got it?”
He laughed. “You got it. Congratulations.”
We hit the lottery. We had a home.
A new project.
The next eight-or-so weeks began our honeymoon-ic beginnings as a couple living together for the first time. It consisted of lots of excitement, countless trips to IKEA, and plenty of trivial little arguments that come with living together.
It was exciting.
Luckily, I already had a handful of friends that lived in the city, so our new country start wasn’t lonely. Friends took us to their favorite secret food spots that the general public hadn’t tainted yet. We went to floating bars on the river and rooftop clubs in the CBD.
But just after a month in, we decided to start a project we’d been talking about doing for almost a year now — publishing Jihyun’s first English-learning eBook. After getting settled into the new country, we put our heads down and got to work.
Our new home was our office, our favorite restaurant, and our date night spot. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, Jihyun sat at her desk and worked her ass off writing, designing, and marketing the book. I helped edit and produce certain aspects of the book while juggling clients on top of my “day job.”
We were in a new country, but we didn’t leave the house often (which was perfectly fine for Jihyun, the homebody of all homebodies). I took my daily walk to get my world-famous Melbourne coffee, grab groceries from the local market, and exercise around our hip little neighborhood in Richmond. But other than that, our apartment was our universe.
It’s funny when I think about it.
We moved to an exciting, new country — to be homebodies.
. . .
So far, daily life in Australia has been very much like any other place in the world. I get up early to work. She wakes up hours later and we eat together. We work more. I retire for the night and she stays up working late.
We often lose track of the day of the week. I often joke that she doesn’t even know that the seasons have changed (it’s winter here, now).
Our time in Australia has been a bit reclusive, so far. We haven’t trekked or explored much yet, but we are nearing the end of a different kind of journey.
And for those wondering, our hard work paid off. The book sold like hotcakes and Jihyun’s following has never been stronger. We publish next week, and we couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve put together.
A word on cliff jumping and old passions.
I kind of want to end this little story/update about our lives in Melbourne with a reflection. I’m reading a book right now called Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. It’s basically a short, inspirational book for creatives (and non-creatives) about, well, creativity.
He covers several eye-opening points, but two things, in particular, hit me like a sack of bricks.
One of the main points is:
Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started.
In other words: just start doing the thing you want to do. My quickly-scribbled notes from reading this section:
You’re ready. Just start making stuff.
NOBODY in the world knows what they’re doing.
“Ask anybody doing truly creative work, and they’ll tell you the truth - they don’t know where the good stuff comes from. They just show up and do their thing every day.”
Not a single person on earth needs to give you permission to do anything.
I’ve always kind of prided myself on having a relatively strong “fuck it, just do it” mentality, whether it was quitting my jobs back in LA and leaving the country, writing my first book, or diving into new careers.
Sometimes I’ll be working at my desk, then stop suddenly and think: “Am I really in Australia right now? Did I really live in Korea for five years? Do I really make a living typing words into this warm, silver device?”
I’m only here because of a few separate occasions where I jumped off a seemingly-towering cliff, only to find that the bottom wasn’t filled with spiky rocks, but rather a comfortable, bouncy mattress — with several other “jumpers” welcoming me to that next stage. You kind of look back at the cliff to find…it wasn’t really a cliff, but just a couple of steps off a staircase.
But however “go-for-it-ish” I am, Jihyun is like that…tenfold. It’s been really inspiring seeing her just going for whatever goal she has.
She wanted to create a YouTube channel, so she did it. She didn’t really care what anyone else thought. Now she has a devoted fanbase of nearly 50k followers.
She decided to put an eBook together. So she sat down at her computer and opened a blank document in Pages. And started writing. Now we’re putting the final touches on a nearly-500 page textbook (yeah 500) for nearly 2,000 customers (yeah 2,000).
Even after several years of my own anxiety-producing “go for it” moments, I find that I still kind of slide back into my comfort zone. It never really gets easier. For me, at least. I stop seeking out new challenges and projects and goals that seem other-worldly to me.
It’s been an inspiration to sit by this girl, who on the daily, just goes for it. I got a front seat to watch all of this blossom from a tiny seedling of an idea into a full-fledged business.
I write about this today to spread a little bit of that inspiration for any of you that might need a nudge on a project, passion, or hobby that you’ve had. And I wish there was a more sophisticated way to say it. But all I can really think of is:
Just do it.
Seriously, go, now. Do it.
Google how to do it.
Open the blank document.
Sit down for half an hour and look at the wall and brainstorm.
It’s scary. I know because I’m doing it now, too.
But I think the worst thing you and I could do is procrastinate another day until our ideas turn into dead dreams that we sigh about when we’re old and gray.
This leads to the second and final point I’ll write about from Kleon’s book. It is:
Don’t throw any of yourself away.
The author’s main point here is basically: all of the things you’ve done in your life, every hobby, every past job, every tiny, seemingly insignificant skill that you’ve collected on your journey, has an important place in your life.
Some scribble notes:
“If you have two or three or four passions, if you have hobbies from your childhood, if you have silly little things you like to do in your free time — don’t ever throw them away.”
“None of us really know it now, or how it will work — but all of the dots are eventually going to connect to a bigger picture later.”
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards.”
As someone who has had more jobs, passions, and hobbies than anyone else I’d ever met — this was probably one of the most comforting things I’ve ever read in my life.
I won’t lie — every time I leaned into a new career or project, I got severely depressed at the thought of having “wasted” years at another kind of work. Another set of skills to throw in my dusty toolshed.
But I’ve recently stumbled onto yet another new project that I’m going to undertake, and I somehow found a way to leverage all of my old skills into one, single business idea.
That feeling of just seeing all of the dots connect — it’s like putting the final piece into a completed puzzle and seeing what the picture is supposed to be.
You kind of just look back, and the only way I can describe it is…
“Oooooooooooooooooooooooooh.”
“That’s why.”
I write this to let anyone else that has been reaching blindly into the dark for some sort of shapeless “thing” that you’re meant to be doing.
I’ll just let you know — something’s there. It’s a couple of meters in front of you. I can see it, even if you can’t.
And you’ll eventually find it, as long as you keep actively reaching for it.
. . .
Both of Kleon’s points have something in common. There’s this kind of overwhelming, intimidating, towering feeling of something in front of you — and that eye-opening look back in hindsight that shows it was never as scary as you originally thought — and that things fall into place how they’re supposed to.
To summarize:
If you’ve been thinking of doing something, but have been “waiting for a sign” to get started, you have two options:
Realize there is no “right time” and your “sign” is never coming. So just start.
Realize that this article is your “sign.” And get started.
And if there’s anyone else like me, who has a few too many tools in the shed, keep dusting them off and practicing them. Their time will come.
Toodaloo.
elliott
WOW Eli!!! I know you have so many tools in your shed and I'm so proud of your feeling of seeing all of the dots connect. Your article is for sure "the sign" for me today!!!
I found a lot of inspiration from this. Thanks man.