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...]
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...]