[This is a post by the other half of Zen Black.]
I graduated from University into a world that was about to experience the devastations of the biggest financial crisis of my (then) young life.
The only creative job I landed many months later — which I absolutely loved —lasted only a short while. I was made redundant due to general layoffs.
I couldn’t find any creative work after this. I worked a handful of retail jobs, wondering in depression, what the point of working so hard for a degree had been.
Learning had always been a struggle for me, things always came slow. Combining this with being bullied badly when I was a child, had only made my time in school more difficult. Getting through the world of formal education had hence been a huge challenge.
But as I found out, real life was just as challenging, if not worse.
A few more months passed before I found an entry-level full time job, working in role that reduced my design degree to cutting and pasting digital images for newspaper adverts at a used car yard.
I felt suffocated, not only by the lack of creative work, but by the work place, which was the ultimate ‘boys club'. I don’t see myself as a feminist (certainly not in a radical sense), but with these people these was no ambiguity: They were sexist pigs.
I was belittled and undervalued. My design competence meant nothing to them. I was merely a useless cog in their wheeling and dealing games of deceiving customers.
I was told to ‘know my place’ by rude managers, while being relentlessly coaxed by one sleazy colleague for a catchup at a local bar to discuss "work issues".
Thankfully, I had enough of a backbone to keep declining the jerk.
By day, I worked this horrible job, being a robot just as the school system had trained me; by night, I unleashed the creative artist out, in the expression of dance.
It was the only thing that was keeping me alive. The music, the intuitive movement in rhythm with another soul. It was magic by night, death by day.
Few years passed living like this; depression and confusion had started to take a grip on my life.
Then something happened: I got invited by a friend to attend her marriage overseas. I did not have to think twice; I decided to immediately book a flight.
This would be my first solo international trip, and also an effort to explore the world beyond the comfort of my own backyard.
My friend had moved to now be overseas with the guy she had met while traveling a while ago. I thought, since I’ve always wanted to travel, I should go — not just for the wedding, but for myself too.
I needed to start exploring parts of myself that had been mostly kept suppressed in my life until then.
I organized everything and made the 10-day trip happen. It was an exciting time! I had 4 days in the city where my friend was to be married, and 6 days in another!
I enjoyed my time at the wedding, but as soon as I landed in the second city I felt something move in my heart. I didn’t know why, but I knew I needed to move my life here.
I returned back home determined to make a change, but it wasn’t as easy as I thought. Years of conditioning was starting to play havoc with my decision making.
I remember, I kept pacing back and forth in the workplace cafeteria, everyday, repeating “I’m quitting this job and moving elsewhere. I’m quitting this job and moving elsewhere.” It sounded crazy, but it became my mantra.
A week later the mad person in me had won, and by the end of month I had resigned. I decided to trade my false sense of security from this meaningless job for something in the unknown — all based on the whisper of my intuition.
I had to give notice to my housemates, sort through all the stuff I'd accumulated in my life, and say goodbye to friends and family.
I also needed to sell my car, so I could have some funds to support myself until I found work in a new city. I had been pretty bad at saving money until then.
My car wasn't worth even a couple of thousand dollars. My expectations weren’t great with selling the vehicle; it had been sent to the mechanics recently due to a break down.
But after I picked up the vehicle from the mechanics, a moment of misfortune turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Someone drove into the rear of my car as I turned out of the repair shop, my vehicle was deemed a write-off, and I got covered for a decent insurance payout. I didn’t have to go through the difficulty of selling the car after all.
I also received an extra months pay from never having claimed my yearly leave at work.
I flew into the unknown with a mix of emotions. I felt excited to be taking flight in a new direction, a new lease on life, but I knew I had a lot of work to do to grow up.
I carried 2 really large bags of belongings with me across the ocean. Most of that meaningless ‘stuff’ would be reduced significantly to live a more refined and simplified life in time to come, but that’s another story for another day.
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I arrived from the airport to the central railway station. I wandered down the main street where a funeral service for some prominent individual was taking place that day. Looking back at this moment, it was a symbolic representation of my life: My old self dying.
The following weeks would be a combination of organizing new accommodation, exploring the dance scene, job interviews, and trying to find my feet in this new city.
I found some hospitality work through someone I met at the airport on my arrival here to keep me going for a bit. It was nice to have met a helpful stranger in a new city to begin my journey.
Through my design job-hunts, I also got invited to a party by a friend where, I found out that one of his colleagues was moving on from a design firm.
He encouraged me to apply for a position, and I finally managed to find some temporary design work as a result. I'd be working there on a contract basis, with the potential for full time work.
This coincided with me finding a new place to live in. The house was a charming hundred year old Victorian Terrace, with all the elaborate details.
It was well kept, but it also had many quirks. My room was comparable to an attic, with it’s old wooden floors, un-usable fireplace, and one small window. It was kind of like Paddington Bear’s room!
I loved it!
For me, the locality and proximity to the town centre was most enjoyable. I would go out dancing in the evening when I could, and be able to walk back home within minutes!
But I was now quickly running out of money because the part time jobs were just not good enough to maintain the expenses of life in this new city.
I had been looking for a full time design job for 2–3 months in vain.
I was starting to wonder if my giant leap of faith into the unknown was going to be a massive failure. I kept distracting myself via dance to keep myself from facing the reality — that things weren’t really working out as I'd hoped.
Eventually, I had one of those really low moments, and I broke down in a heap. I realized I couldn’t do this by myself and I needed help! It felt like a deep cry from my soul because I felt lost in more ways than just finding a job.
A few days later, the design firm where I was working on a casual basis finally offered me a full time position. But there was a kicker: I was going to get paid less than what I was making back home in my copy/paste job.
This disturbed me. I wondered what was the point of making all these sacrifices, working a low rung position for years, moving over here — only to get paid less than my zombie-job back home?
Around the same time I got a call back from another full-time job I had applied for at a printing company.
The interviews were scheduled for the same day. A job interview at the printing company, and then a meeting with the small design firm to accept or decline the low-paying position.
Some would say I should’ve been grateful for having at least this much. I can understand that, but something inside me was changing. I knew this kind of thinking just couldn’t help me move ahead in life. This conflict, would invariably change the course of my, then, unconscious life.
I finished up the job interview at the print company (which did not go well), and I had a couple of hours left before my meeting at the design firm.
I was starving! I knew I couldn’t afford to eat out at the hipster cafes near the train station. I decided that I would quickly walk back home and make myself a snack.
But as I was walking home, something written on a chalkboard outside one of the cafe’s caught my attention. I can’t remember what that quote was, but I distinctly remember something about it just made me stop. My feeling was to go inside, even though it was not feasible to get lunch here.
I went in anyway.
Once I walked in, I thought: ‘I’m here now, I so I might as well order something.’
I looked at the menu and ordered some kind of pasta. I picked up my food from the counter and took a seat at an empty table. Just as I was about to take my first bite, I heard someone call out to me!
[ During my job researching phase there was no internet at the house I was living in, so I would go to a nearby cafe to browse for jobs on their wifi.
One day, a scruffy-friendly-musician meandered in and struck up a light conversation with me.
Fast forward to a week or two, here he is, sitting with some other guy.]
Without hesitation, they asked me: ‘Would you like to join us?’
Part of me was like ‘Leave me alone, I have some important things to think about', but then another part said: ‘Just go with the flow.’
Well, the whisper struck twice within the space of a few minutes, and I decided to join them.
I would say the scruffy musician’s friend was a bit of a mad-hatter. He was wearing a Cuban hat and a blue striped jacket.
Then, everything changed.
The mad-hatter just started asking me interesting questions, and he got me talking. For some reason I felt like openly sharing the real frame of mind I was in.
In the space of about 20 minutes, he convinced me that I should go and ask for exactly what I felt my time was worth, or walk away.
It’s a bizarre thing to say, but something in that conversation was really trans-formative. I went into the meeting feeling a sense of clarity and confidence that had been missing for a very long time.
Somehow, this was the conversation which would encourage the spirit in me — that was craving some form of release, of meaning, and purposefulness in life.
Unbeknown to me at this point, the mad-hatter would become an extremely important part of my journey. You may have already had a peek into his journey prior to this post.
And here we are, still in this trip together; time and again being thrown into unknown adventures.
From a curious intuitive whisper, to an inner awakening, sandwiched together with lots of crazy, dark, challenging, but ultimately life changing stories in between.
A less tested soul would have given up a long time ago.
Not us.