Amid the blown bicycle innertubes, piles of bedsheets and stacks of books was a precarious plan for my life. The apartment was a mess; my head was tangled up in excitement and uncertainty.
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As I cleared out the accumulated dust from the last two years, I wondered whether I would be able to pare down to bare bones. Moving in with my fiancee was just the practice run; I would stuff everything into her studio apartment, then gradually sift my possessions until they fit into a backpack. This was the easy part.
Off the Deep End © a lui
Ahead of me was locking down a job, securing work visas and finding an apartment for my move to Seoul. The back and forth emails with editors had yielded nothing certain — there might be a position open in a few months, they wrote. I was beginning to fully realize what I’d already known. This wouldn’t be like the first time, with the safety net of university-sponsored study abroad programs and all the friendships they afforded. This time it would be just me and my fiancee, carving out a life in the neon mess of a churning city.
***
Returning to South Korea is an idea, a goal rather, that I have carried ever since I left the country in 2005. But coupled with this goal has always been a nagging doubt: will I be able to get job doing what I want to do, writing for a newspaper? Teaching English is fine for some, but putting that kind of energy into a job I’m far from passionate about would seem to defeat the purpose of going back to Seoul in the first place — not to mention it being unfair to any potential students, who would bear the brunt of my short-fused patience with kids.
The thing about doubt is that fills in for questions that you haven’t tried to answer; internally rationalizing that something won’t work is a lot easier than throwing yourself into the fray. Last summer, with graduation approaching, I was still dragging my feet on sending out job enquiries to publications in Seoul. My Korean was too rusty, I told myself. I worried that my resume wasn’t impressive.
Seoul Reflections © tylerdurden1
What overcame this doubt, however, was fear: of letting my goal slip away, of allowing my education and planning to be all for naught. And so one day, instead of aimlessly perusing the internets, I contacted people whom I thought could give me advice or who might know someone in the industry.
Looking for a job overseas while still at home puts you at an immediate disadvantage. Were you in the country, you could dress sharply, show up at the office, give a firm handshake and drop off your resume with your best foot forward. In this case, you’re reduced to crafting an intriguing email subject line and praying that it won’t get filed under spam, or placing an expensive phone call in hopes that the secretary won’t just put you through to voicemail.
The key here is making a contact who is in the country and who can vouch for you, or at least drop your name. This, of course, will only get your foot in the door; I got a few names and email addresses this way, and wishes for good luck.
After sending off my cover letters came a few painstaking days of waiting. Then nothing. I sent off follow-up emails and waited some more. Then came the subtle rejections: “We’ll keep your resume on file,” “We recently filled that position,” and the like.
But among the various responses was one glimmering option: a copyediting position was available at an English-language daily. I went through the interview process and was offered the job, and was told that I needed to be there in a month. The catch? My own wedding was scheduled for the coming summer in Wisconsin.
Still hopeful, I suggested that I could come on the condition that I be given a month’s leave to go home, get married and help my new bride move back with me. I was given a short-order reply: Sorry, contact us after you get married.
I was bummed, to be sure, but the experience taught me something valuable about finding work abroad — make sure you, and your potential employer, have all the details. Before taking a journey halfway around the world with your life in tow, you ought to know what you’re committing to.
***
In the following months, and up until now, my anxiousness over moving back to Seoul has grown. I get flashes of anticipation, memories of restaurants and parks to which I can’t wait to return, followed by the familiar sinking of my own self-confidence and incessant “what-ifs.”
But in the end, the first step in leaving home is simply being determined to do so. And so my fiancee and I set a date by when we want to have walked through the arrivals gate at Incheon International. On the wall of our cluttered apartment hangs a map with pins and string, connecting where we are to where we want to be. All the things that need done to make it happen are simply details waiting to be filled in.