So, how does it all start (part 4)
I have neglected my story over the past 3 weeks, I have all sort of excuses though: trip to Argentina, trip to Barcelona, work, life … all very demanding circumstances that distracted me for a bit. Some of these distractions are actually a product of what I was going to talk about in this post and life has provided me with real experiences that I can now share 
As I was mentioning previously, we had just purchased, almost impulsively, this beautiful 10 acres farm in Northern NSW and we were now facing the most challenging times of our lives in recent times: we were new parents, we now had a mortgage and a house around 7h drive North of Sydney and my job was in Sydney or in Adelaide. Danielle was already working in a mostly remote situation, so for her the prospects of moving to the country were not as daunting as they were for me. Living in the country meant big changes without any doubt.
Let me quickly digress to a topic that’s not entirely related to the tree-change but will reveal a deep, troubling change that I went through and I think it’s one of the fundamental issues with moving away from the city, at least from my point of view, due to the way we are perceived in today’s society. I realised that I was building my own personality based on my profession or job title. I started to see myself through my work. I had been very lucky to have worked most of my life with extremely bright people, that were as eager as I was to continuously improve and learn, people that believed, like I did, in some basic values: collaboration, transparency, honesty. And when you get to spend your career working mostly in environments that are full of passionate, creative people, it’s hard not to get this type of “association” with work. I worked with GaiaSur in Buenos Aires, Argentina, then Greenpeace International in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and finally Rising Sun Pictures in Sydney and Adelaide, Australia. This is not my full work experience however it’s the last 11 years and in all those years, I had that privilege. I worked with some amazing, passionate, honest and creative people and I believe that it’s thanks to them that I became the person I am today (from a professional point of view). Of course, I have to claim some of that credit however the environment, the people that surrounded me, the people I worked with, showed me, in practical terms, what those values looked like in a commercial and non-profit world. It didn’t matter so much what type of work we did, from creating the infrastructure for a major ISP from the ground-up with mostly open source software, to figuring out how to engage world-wide audiences to solve the world’s environmental problems, I always got deeply involved as did all the people I worked with. And when you put so much energy into work, you start living your life through it. Or at least, that’s what happened to me. My own perception of myself was that I was that guy that worked with technology and people.
This perception of myself changed dramatically when Zeek was born. I think the specifics of the change are a topic for another post as it’s quite a deep change, which I saw in some good friends as well. Don’t take me wrong, it was a great change! I am extremely happy about it however it’s not an easy transition.
So, getting back to the tree-change. I was this persona, a CTO of a great company -this opens many doors in today’s society- and I only realised this after a few months of living up North and having a bit of time to reflect, if I moved up I would have to give that up, return to be Bruno. Could I actually be happy without a buzzing environment around me? Would this affect my career? Do I care about a career? I didn’t even know I would be asking those questions when we bought our house. And I am glad I didn’t otherwise I would have been paralised by fear at the time of making that decision.
When I turned 30 (almost 7 years ago), I swore to myself that I would not be paralysed by my fears, that I would face them and conquer them. Step by step I’ve been conquering some of them. For example, I really couldn’t stand spiders, I would freak out at the sight of even a tiny little one. Now, I can take a big hunstman (ok, it’s not a red-back or funnel-web) with a glass and take it outside without killing it and without sweating too much. I’ve started working towards my Private Pilot License and I am afraid of heights. So, when I was confronted with this fundamental fear of loosing that job title, I thought to myself “is that fear based on something real or fake?” and I believe it is fake. I decided I wasn’t my job title, I was myself, with all my flaws and also with all my experiences. And, what was the worst that could happen? The worst would have been to have to come back to our parents place without a house. Well, that’s not worst not taking the risk. It’s not a permanent loss. I never thought of material possessions as a fundamental definition of who I am even though I lost sight of that for a bit.
With the many people that I’ve talked about a tree-change, many mentioned keeping a certain level of income as one of the biggest challenges. Some mentioned keeping their career. The vast majority look at it as a way to get away from the vortex of our current consumerist society, reducing the stress, living a more balanced life. And finally, almost everyone thinks it’s a dream, something impossible to do. Danielle and I never really deeply thought about it until after we did and, despite the fears, the obstacles, we always thought that the changes it might bring would make us (her, Zeek and myself) much better for it, and if we gave up now, without trying, we would regret it all our life.
In the end, this post ended up being more about the fears that I had to face rather than obstacles. I think I will leave that to a follow-up post as I want to go and enjoy being with my son and my beautiful partner now and not be in front of the computer in a beautiful, sunny day, in Buenos Aires.
[To be continued...]
Are we trendy?
The Sydney Morning Herald has an article today about a couple getting tired of Sydney’s hectic rhythm and the impact it has on you, and deciding to change their life and, as we did, move out of the big smoke, to leave a more sustainable life.
Could it be that without even knowing it, we are part of a trend?
So, how does it all start (part 3)
Our initial search for a home was focussed on Adelaide. Why? At the time I was working for Rising Sun Pictures, a great visual effects company, and our main office was located there. As a city, it has all the ammenities: good schools, parks, hills, great wine regions, good food, good coffee, great chocolate, etc. It’s still small enough that you don’t get too many traffic jams and you can cycle (except if you have to go through the Hills, then you need to be really fit). And I wouldn’t have to look for work, as I could work from our Adelaide office. Everything seemed to be perfect, right?
Well, not so. See, when we started looking for a property to buy, the “realestate boom” was starting to slow down considerably in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth. Adelaide, for some reason was behind schedule, it was picking up steam there. Our budget was getting us less and less by the month. The market was growing very fast and the properties we could afford were, of course, larger and nicer than what we could have ever dreamed in Sydney however they were not The House we were looking for. None of the houses that were in our range seduced us both at first sight.
It’s amazing, sometimes one spends more time shopping for cloths, trying them on, than looking at a house that would put us in a stupidely deep level of debt. A house, you go to the opening, if you like it, you get it inspected, etc … but you usually don’t get back there too many times. How much time did we spend on houses that we then went to auctions for? Max 1.5h in total .. maybe 2h. It’s weird. And then we are expected to bid hundreds of thousands of dollars worth.
We also had to deal with real estate agents that greeted us with: “Oh! we love you, Sydney people, coming over here full of cash” (if only he knew).
Anyway, after several months, and probably two dozen properties viewed (remember: we were living in Sydney at the time, so every time we had to check a place, we had to go to Adelaide), we selected two or three that we were really serious about (still not the dream place we had in our heads but …). We made an offer on one or two, went to auction on another one and didn’t even get close to negotiate. Maybe our offers were way low in relation to the owners expectations. Only if they knew about the sub-prime and what was to come, I am sure our offers would have been accepted. Back in May, June 2008, there was still a belief that whatever was happening in the US wouldn’t affect Australia, after all, we have the “resources boom” going on.
I have to acknowledge the generosity and warmth with which two different families (I won’t name them as I haven’t checked with them if it’s OK to put their names on my blog yet) received us every time we went to Adelaide to check places. They helped us so much, it’s a debt that we have with them and we shall treasure the beautiful moments we had with them in Adelaide.
After the last failed auction, we came back to Sydney, quite depressed frankly. We had spent thousands upon thousands of dollars in travel, car rentals, inspections, fees, and still, nothing and everything seemed to be getting more expensive by the day. That night we had dinner with friends who own a property in Bellingen and had put it on the market (they need a larger home, with a kid and a second one on the way). They showed us the website of the real-estate agent and as we were browsing we saw this property, within our budget and Danielle and I looked at each other and we knew, “this is IT”. We didn’t think about what it meant to move to the country, we didn’t think about the implications, we just dreamed about a beautiful place in paradise, with enough land to allow us to drastically reduce our environmental impact, quite close to a beautiful little town in country NSW.
Many of the implications of what purchasing this place would mean, came to us later. The “tree-change” as it is known, was an after thought. We wanted a place that would allow Zeek to grow in an environment that wouldn’t be as superficial as Bondi Beach is nowadays, that would allow him to run amok and play in a park without fear of cars or needles from junkies, that we could go to work without having to drive.
We came here, inspected the property and over the following couple of days made an offer, negotiated it a little bit and it was accepted. We settled and on July 5th took possession of our place! It was very fast, very simple and straight forward.
It seems like an impulsive purchase. In a sense, I guess it was but if you come and visit us, you will see how beautiful this land is, the valley talks to you and you cannot but fall in love with this place. Everything else that’s not love and family would have to take a second order of priority.
In the next installments, I will describe what we did in order to move here. The major changes that we had to put in place, the risks that we ran and we are still running and, well, how our experience has been.
[to be continued...]
So, how does it all start? (part 2)
As I was mentioning in a my previous post, when Ezequiel was born, many things changed and that was the start of it. At that time, I took a month off work (a mix between parental leave and the festive period) which allowed me to be a full-time dad. My parents visited from Argentina to meet Ezequiel and to give us a hand when I went back to work and then, I realised that raising a child wasn’t as simple as I had first thought. Sorry if I digress but this relates to the reasons for our tree-change. We’ve discussed this with our friends who are now parents, it’s very hard to understand how life-changing having a kid is for those that don’t have children. I was like that, I couldn’t understand, deeply, why my nephew screamed (he was a little boy, I’ve since learned that they do that, all the time 
) or why kids would throw tantrums. You might say that I am naïve, because I was a kid once and I did all those things. That’s possibly true but I had a very romantic idea of what being a dad meant and never realised that it would have such a profound impact on myself. First, it’s incredibly rewarding and incredibly hard at exactly the same time. With the same ease, it goes from the most intense joy to despair.
Anyway, I realised that I was focussing too much of my emotional energy at work and wasn’t left with much to deal with the challenges of being a dad and a partner. I used to come home at the time when Ezequiel got grumpy after a day of activity and wasn’t able to cope gracefully and enjoy every moment because I was too stressed or too tired. Danielle was telling me “there’s going to be work for the rest of your life, Ezequiel won’t be this little for much longer, you should enjoy this time with him before he gets to his teenage years and starts telling us ‘I hate you guys, you don’t understand me … ‘ ”.
Danielle was right, I needed to focus my emotional energy on being a father and a partner. That’s when the words from my dad came back to me. Love and Family. They are easily overlooked, in particular in our busy lives focussed on the very diverse, active and overwhelming word on the web. However this was not yet the moment when we realised that we needed to move to the country … what we realised is that we needed to find our own place.
We had been living with Danielle’s folks for a while, saving money to get our deposit for our home loan (yes, the Great Australian Dream) and with a baby, it became more difficult to stay there. Not that we were not welcome, on the contrary, her parents have been extremely generous and without them, we wouldn’t be able to be here, however the rhythms and demands of a young baby can be very different to that of an established family, who’s kids are all adults now. This was really the trigger that made us think about the need to get our own place and so the quest to find a place started.
[to be continued...]
So, how does it all start? (part 1)
As I described in the last paragraph of a previous post, I have been wanting to write more about the adventures, ups and downs, we have gone through in our tree-change.
BTW this is just our story, it’s not meant to be a “guide for a tree change”. I hope, though, that by telling our story (the good and the bad sides) you will understand what it means and how it can transform your life. It’s not that hard, it just takes a bit of courage, facing a few fears and perseverance.
So let me start with a bit of background. Danielle and I have lived all our lives in cities. Danielle lived in Sydney (AU), in Brighton (UK), Amsterdam (NL) and I lived in Paris (FR), Buenos Aires (AR), Amsterdam (NL) and Sydney (AU). I’ve also lived for shorter periods of time in many other places around the world but that’s probably the subject of another post. As you can see, we’ve both lived mostly in first world countries, in large and comfortable cities, with all the ammenities you can expect in a capital city like Sydney or Paris, with large pools of entertainment, distractions, 24h cafés and bookshops, etc. We are used to be in crowds, living the life as shown for the civilised men in “The Gods Must Be Crazy” and we both work and play on the web. It’s really easy to get seduced by the big city lights and it’s infinite distractions, restaurants and cinemas. When we lived on Francis St, in Bondi Beach, we used to have an outrageous amount of takeaway food, drink wine and spend a lot of time travelling from one side to another. Life was easy and our concerns were more about ourselves rather than our impact on the environment (this is hard to write as I worked for 4 years for Greenpeace trying to change these exact patterns of behaviour that I was exhibiting).
In December 2007 Ezequiel was born and so our life changed pretty drastically. Having this little beautiful boy changed me so deeply, it’s hard to explain. A few years ago my father, now getting close to 70 years of age (this is just to say that he has lived a long life and experienced it), told me that the two most important things in life are love and family (with family being a lose definition, because I consider some of my close friends family). Nothing should get in the way of that. And I only truly realised that after Zeek joined us.
[To be continued...]