I met a woman during my time in school. She really wasn’t like anyone I had ever met before, and I quickly fell in love with her. The problem was that we lived worlds apart. She was Korean and living in Germany. After a couple of months of talking, we decided to meet in person. The day we met fundamentally changed both of our lives forever, and we knew we needed to be together. Later, during one spring break, I decided to take a risk and fly to Korea. I had never been to another country on my own before, and I didn’t know what to expect. It’s pretty rare to have one life-changing experience, but I was having two within the span of a year. I loved it in Korea and concluded the trip with two things: I knew I wanted to move to Korea, and most importantly, be with her. So when I finished school, after months of applying, I landed my first job as a freelance 3D Modeler for a company in New York. Since it was freelance, I took the opportunity due to the job’s flexibility and decided to pack my bags for South Korea to be with this woman whom I would later propose to, marry, and have a child with.
Upon moving to Korea in 2017, I learned a very important lesson. I learned how competitive and cutthroat the creative industry can be. Every job I had in my youth was a part-time, predictable, and stable job. I knew as long as I did the work, I would have more work for as long as I put up with it, so I was shocked that one month after moving to Korea—and three months total on the job—the freelance project I landed was canceled, and I had no backup job in line. So, I not only was living in a new country but was also jobless with a career that barely started with no real experience to show. My Korean speaking skills were nearly nonexistent at the time, so any game jobs in Korea would be impossible. The immediate solution was to teach English in Korea. At the time, I saw this as a temporary solution while finding a new online job. I found a teaching job, and for one year I focused on building my portfolio and applying to various jobs as a freelancer. Application after application was rejected, and towards the end of my contract for teaching, I was starting to question the path I had chosen. During this time, I had just got married to my wife, which was a combination of joy and happiness followed by struggle and depression. I had a job, but it barely made ends meet for both of us.
In the spring of 2018, I signed a new contract for a new English teaching job, again with the intention of biding my time to find work in my field, but by the summer of that year, I was very depressed. Modeling was no longer a joy; in fact, I was hating it because it kept reminding me of all the negativity associated with job rejections or failed personal projects. I also hadn’t made any friends in Korea, so besides my wife, I was feeling quite lonely. I had reached an all-time low, and after that summer, I decided to give it up. I was no longer going to pursue a job in games or other graphics-related jobs, and I was going to focus on my new life in Korea as a teacher and try various different things. I found I was a pretty good teacher, the kids loved me, and there were so many new things to explore in my newfound home.