Forced myself to write this because apparently it’s good for your mental health to focus on the wins.
This is not going to be an easy post to write because, to be honest, I haven’t been winning since setting the school record for the seven-flight hurdles in eighth grade. If anything, I often think about how I’ve failed my 14-year-old self. She would be dismayed to find out that her future self is living in the middle of nowhere, Korea, with a husband and two kids, and not a billionaire jetting between her pied-à-terres in New York and Seoul with Taylor Hanson. But I digress. Here are 22 good things and wins that I wrung out of 2022.
We moved for the life we wanted for our family. By far, the biggest highlight of 2022 is that we made the incredibly gutsy move from Gyeonggi to Gyeongnam to send our kids to a country school with a tiny student population. This may not be considered a win for most people in Korea. In fact, it would be considered a lifestyle downgrade to many, and many people wondered if we were sent here because my husband was bad at his job (separate post on that later, ha!).
We all got COVID and we all recovered. Shoutout to the kindergarten germs! We’re grateful to have been vaccinated and recover fairly quickly without long-term effects.
I let go. We took a family trip to Japan and I didn’t plan a single detail except for booking the hotel with points. This is the opposite of how I normally travel, but I realized that the best way to travel with kids is to not have expectations. Without expectations, there’s no disappointment! The highlight of the Japan trip, according to the kids, was swimming in the hotel pool and eating ice cream.
I continued working on freelance gigs. I’m fortunate that I’ve been able have a steady flow of content marketing jobs even after leaving the agency world 12 years ago. Honestly, I think this is because I’m lusty for work and the producers I work with know they can rely on me to turn things around quickly. As a freelancer you have no control over the inflow of opportunities, and if you decline, the work dries up. I have vivid memories of sitting on a donut cushion in an adult diaper, working on a Samsung microsite in the hospital four hours after giving birth to my first child while bleeding from every orifice of my body. Good times, but…
I also allowed myself to quit working. After working nonstop for most of the year, I wrapped up my part-time job in December. Now, I’m learning to turn down gigs that I normally wouldn’t have so I could have more time for myself and for the kids (but mostly for myself).
I started volunteering again. Three weeks after I moved here, I donated some toys and books to local church that runs a secular after-school program for working parents. One thing led to another and now I do weekly story time and phonics class for the elementary kids there. It’s a lot of fun and the kids are eager to learn because they’re not inundated by English at private academies (academies don’t exist here).
I finally got into sourdough. After two years, I decided jump on the pandemic baking bandwagon with “Yeast of Eden” (which also happens to be the one of my favorite books). I’m glad I did, and I’m pleased to find out that most of my neighbors really enjoy the taste of sourdough. I’ve made no-knead loaves, pizzas, tortillas, and a whole lot of crackers with sourdough discard.
We reduced our living expenses tremendously. As part of our relocation to Rural Korea, we were given an opportunity to rent a modest but new three-bedroom, two-bathroom house near the school our kids attend. The rent is actually so nominal that it wouldn’t even be half of what we paid for our previous apartment maintenance fee. This geo-arbitrage aligns nicely with our retirement goals, something that has driven my husband for the past few years.
I got rid of a lot of things. A lot was instigated by the big move and consequent downsizing, but I realized that we’re always going to be somewhat transient and on the move as a family, so having less will help us along and give us more flexibility in the future. I gave away everything I could. I even got around to selling a couple things on the Karrot app that everyone in Korea uses to offload second-hand items.
We finally figured out how to make a good bonfire. It turns out we only needed practice and a torch. And now that we don’t live in an apartment anymore, we can practice and bulmung (불멍, or literally “space out in front of the fire”) every day.
Just a typical bonfire at home with the full moon above I read more books than I had in previous couple years. I didn’t keep count, but I’m sure it was less than 20. But I read often and felt deeply and I learned things they didn’t teach me in school. Some memorable recent reads include Caste by Isabel Wilkerson and Hunger by Roxane Gay.
Our kids played outdoors more than ever before. From signing up for weekend farming activities to guided forest tours in the city, to our new rural grounds and surrounding hills, our kids have spent more time outside this year alone than maybe their entire life up until this point. Now, it’s always a struggle to get them inside for dinner, but one I’m grateful for.
I befriended people I normally would not have crossed paths with. When we moved down south, we left all of our friends and family behind in the Seoul Capital Area. Many of our friends in the city are similar to us: Koreans with international backgrounds with jobs in marketing/PR or tech, but now the people who meet most often are Gyeongnam born and bred and farmers by trade (or people who are obliged to help out on the family farm on the weekends at the very least). I’ve discovered new expressions specific to the regional Gyeongsang dialect. I’ve found where to forage for wild butterbur in our village. I learned about the behaviors of alpha pigs from the local hog farmer. And love hearing about their day to day tasks, like how they sterilize the udders of cows before milking them at 4 am (and how they also grew tired of doing this twice a day and plan to import milking robots from Denmark). There’s so much you can learn from people who share nothing in common with you.
We started using alternative sources of power. Thanks to the solar panels on our roof, our electricity bill typically only amounts to 10,000 KRW (under 8 USD) every month.
I started writing. As I wrapped up my gigs this month, I dusted off old writing books from storage and got back to a short story and young adult novel I started many years ago. It’s something that I’ve always wanted to finish, but I had been putting off with kids and work. So many books to read and to write, so little time.
I got my kids to start speaking to me in English again. When we arrived in Korea nearly two years ago, the kids barely spoke any Korean. Now, they barely speak any English (they understand everything, but conversation doesn’t come naturally to them anymore). Bilingualism is important to me, so I started making more effort to use English with them, and I can see improvements with the right combination of exposure and bribes and stories of a magical place called Trader Joe’s that they can only access if they use English.
I got to gift a staycation to a child who actually appreciates it. I took an overnight trip to a nice resort in Busan with a new friend/neighbor and her 12-year-old because hotels are prohibitive and inaccessible for their large family (FYI: having four kids in Korea is the US equivalent of having a family big enough to get its own reality TV show). It was really special to see the trip from the eyes of a child who is young enough to delight in the chocolate fountains at the breakfast buffet, yet old enough to appreciate the ocean view deluxe rooms.
I found a go-to dessert I could make in less than 30 minutes. Sometimes I need a quick sugar fix after lunch, and I found a crowd pleaser I could bake in less than thirty minutes through a random google search: Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Bars by Mel’s Kitchen Cafe. It doesn’t call for anything fancy like cream of tartar or a two-hour chilling time. It’s just straight up butter and sugar, the two pillars of good baking.
I found Barefoot Wine locally. Our favorite cheap wine was spotted at the local (nearby) Lotte Mart. I have previously found this wine at Nonghyup Hanaro Mart in Gyeonggi as well.
This is both a win and a loss, but we moved to a region without snow. Perks: Not being hindered by snow and having overall milder weather. Cons: No more magical snow days and snowmen. Plus, our industrial-grade snow tubes looking lonely in storage.
We got to see stars for the first time in years. I’ve always lived in light-polluted cities as an adult, so I’m still awestruck by the stars above my head whenever I step outside at night.
I started to move my body again. This year has been a terrible year for fitness, but this week I called a nearby dance studio to inquire about classes (Kpop, obvi). The one I wanted to join was cancelled, but it’s a start!
Wrapping up this list, it seems that most of the wins in this list are related to our move to the countryside because it’s been transformative and also the most recent. So many people were were worried for our big move, including our new neighbors who ask us every week how we’re adjusting and if we’re not bored yet. I would say we’re doing better than fine; we’re thriving.
Next up: 22 fails in 2022, for balance.