This life is over, but I'm still living it

Last night as I sat on a trolley surrounded by newspapers, waiting for the press to start, I made a note on my phone. I had been thinking about what my next chapter for this evolving book would be. I didn’t feel called to write anything in particular. I felt detached, tired, over it. I thought back to the weeks since I wrote my last chapter and what had taken place. Was there anything of note? Are there any themes arising? Where is the spark? Sure, things happened. Things always happen. But nothing of use was jumping out at me.

In fact, what was jumping out at me was my desire to burn it all down. To fade away. To stop writing here, for it is already February and my dreams haven’t come true, therefore there was no possible way they would in the remaining 10 months of this year. I felt embarrassed and ashamed to have claimed such a big goal, one that is by all means unlikely to come to fruition within the timeline I had specified (if at all). I thought about how things kept going wrong. Well, not wrong per se. Just not… right. 

I thought back to my life over the past years, and how many times things have gone less than right. What has flourished? What has fallen flat on its face? I looked at the patterns, the themes, the emotions… I held it all within the fraction of a second that my thumbs hovered over my phone’s keyboard. I could feel it throughout my body. A sensation. A knowing. A pervasive illness. One that in writing these words right now I am able to put a language to. A realisation: I am not meant to be here. With this feeling, I wrote a note to my future self (today’s self, no less) in the hopes that I would capture this particular experience in a chapter to send to you.

This life is over

but I’m still living it

No guarantee

that I’ll get to the next.

I am not meant to be here, and everything in my life has conspired to force me into action. It feels like the doors are closing on this life, this chapter, but things aren’t quite aligned for me to begin the next. What I am now negotiating on a daily basis is the reality of being crushed by these closing doors before I can take my next step. I fear that life itself will crush me, crush my spirit, crush my dreams, and I will not make it. Even as I write this, my arms are heavy and aching. My mind is sluggish. My body is tired. 

This is the chapter I didn’t want to write. This is the sticky, mundane, anticlimactic middle part, where I fight myself just to keep going. But this is where I’m at. And the purpose of this book is to show you what each and every step looks like. The good, the less-than-good, the boring bit in the middle. So with heavy arms and a looming migraine, I welcome you to my sticky icky boring bit… one that I very dearly hope precedes the really good bit. One that I dearly hope doesn’t mark the beginning of the end of me and this (and us). You know?

The weeks since I last wrote to you have been strange. When I returned from visiting my hometown in Western Australia, I suddenly lost all interest in the outside world. I slipped out of contact with all my friends. I became consumed by my work. Then, I got very unwell for a few weeks and had to use my energy to restructure my daily routine. I focussed on setting myself up for success. I was experiencing a lot of inflammation in my body, so I altered my diet, started tracking how much water I was drinking, and set daily step goals. I would prioritise eating within the first hour of waking, and taking as much care of myself as I could. Many days, this was all I did. I looked after myself. I went to work at the newspaper factory. I couldn’t do much else. Yet my mind was completely preoccupied with the projects I was trying to work on. Each slither of good health and energy I got, I worked on I Am ARMY II, a book project that was one year overdue. 

February came around and I felt a shift of energy. I was hopeful that I could turn things around and start to build momentum. I completed work on I Am ARMY II’s manuscript and started feeling a buzz of elation. I do love to make books, and all of a sudden it was coming together. Outside of that, though, I had been unable to progress anything else. One of the harder lessons of my illness is that I can’t seem to do more than one thing at a time. Even if I have days and days of time to dedicate to something else. I just can’t seem to do it. So, although I’ve made progress since we last spoke, it has been very slow-paced. 

There has been one thing, though, that is unfolding and preoccupying my every waking moment. The one big thing to come from January. Something that has seen my life force multiply and rush forth like a huge tractor beam from my chest. Something I equal parts want to keep to myself and want to tell you. I figured I want to keep you in the loop so that you get to watch all of this come together, instead of me springing it on you once it has already happened. That wouldn’t be as fun. I digress.

I, Wallea Eaglehawk, am moving to Seoul, South Korea. 

I’m following through on a decision I made in early 2019 when I sold my cafe. I wanted to become a writer. I wanted to move to Seoul. I wanted to be Korea Wallea. Back then, I didn’t have the means. It wasn’t quite the right time. Now, however, well… I still don’t have the means. But it’s most definitely the right time. South Korea is introducing a digital nomad visa in the second half of this year. This means that I can work for my publishing company in Australia while living in Korea. I can spend my days writing and making books from parks, cafes, and quiet corners of the city. I can make new friends and finally get some solid Korean language learning under my belt. I can live out of home for the first time. I can start fresh. I can heal. I can graduate into adulthood. I can make it. 

So I made this big, life-altering decision. And then life stayed exactly the same. Mundane, painful, life. In fact, it seemed to become more painful. Because now the stakes are even higher. Not only do I have to salvage my company and make a whole lot of content to get on BTS’ radar, I have to do it so I can make it to Korea. Because I need to draw a living wage from my company in order to be a digital nomad. Moreover, I’m starting to see two things very clearly about my move to Korea: The first is that it’s a vital step in my I-wanna-write-a-book-with-BTS-scheme; the second is that I need to move to save myself. 

My life here is over, and every second I continue living it suffocates me. It has taken me far too long to realise that it’s not going to be someone else who takes me from this life. I won’t be offered an amazing opportunity to move to Seoul. No one is coming to save me. It’s me who has to make the move. It’s me who has to put in the work. It’s me, it’s me, it’s me. It appears that the universe gives more work as a reward. I get that now. I said I wanted to move to Seoul and I’ve been saying it for four years. So now I get to put in the work to make it happen. When I get there, my reward is more work: Finding a place to live, integrating, making friends, learning the language, not being a stupid white person. I’m under no illusion that Seoul will be a cure-all. I’ll still be chronically ill. My problems in Australia will likely follow me to Korea. But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m meant to be there with my illness and problems, rather than here. It could be their very clever marketing through K-pop and K-dramas, or it could be destiny… hey, it could be both. Either way, I’m going. 

Even with the knowledge that everything I want lies on the other side of making content, releasing books, and increasing my visibility… things won’t flow. Start, stop. Start, stop. Start, stop. Momentum remains elusive. My frustration with myself seems to be the only constant. My fear is that I will not make it to Seoul, that I will not find the means, that things will not align. That I won’t make it. This life is over, and I know I must leap, but the time to leap is not here yet. So I’m kind of standing on the edge of an eroding cliff, waiting for a visa, hoping I don’t plummet to my death before it’s introduced. 

Despite feeling like nothing is happening, that I don’t have momentum… I believe it’s slowly starting to build. An interesting juxtaposition to how doom-and-gloom I’m feeling. February has been a good month so far. I was invited to do a live Q&A at Bangtan Bookclub’s meeting. They had read Idol Limerence and had so many insights to share. It was a very timely reminder that books are forever, and the right people will find my work at the right time. I’ve managed to post more frequently to Instagram with Wallea Eaglehawk and The BTS Theorist. I even made a return to Twitter in a surprisingly consistent manner. These might seem like trivial things, but establishing a feeling of safety online has been a long journey these past months. The most unexpected turn of events came from my newspaper job, where I was offered a new role within the company. One in publishing. How strange. I hope it comes as no surprise that I accepted it right away. 

The lowlight was when my car’s transmission died all of a sudden. It’s going to cost $5-11k to fix. I took it as a sign that I’m really not meant to be investing in anything Australia-based right now, so I’m selling it for parts and making do without. I’ll chalk it up as another sign that I’m meant to be leaving the country this year. 

The absolute highlight, however, was finishing I Am ARMY II and giving it a worthy subtitle: We don’t need permission. I wrote my chapter, I edited the book, I compiled all the essays and the front matter, I arranged the ISBN and the barcode, and I did countless tiny things to prepare. Then, I sent it to be typeset and finalised the book cover development with the designer. I coordinated the 10 essayists. I paid bills and set up the preorder on the website. I made graphics and promoted the book and watched as my followers responded. I was in complete flow. Absolute bliss. Excitement. Joy. Belonging. It’s not often that I feel like this. But with books, I do. When it all comes together, especially a project that has taken as long as I Am ARMY, well… it’s just everything. 

I’m sharing these moments with you because this is the work. Small steps, big steps, all the steps. They’re all needed in a journey to meet my destiny. I wish I could’ve come here and written a really impressive chapter that uplifts and inspires you. But that’s not where I’m at right now. As I mentioned before, the universe’s reward is more work. And that’s where I’m at. Work. Putting in the work. The inner work, the outer work, the I-work-at-a-newspaper-factory work, and the Korea Wallea work, too. So perhaps, then, I should rename this chapter to This life is over, but I’m still working it. 

I am currently straddling two very different experiences of my reality. I’m feeling like this life is over and I’m suffocated being here. And I’m feeling like everything is slowly building up and maybe, just maybe, I might be on the right track. I just have to keep going. I have to keep working. It is a reward, after all.