This Week in America - The Life I Didn't Expect to Build

This week, a few seemingly unrelated things came together.

A missing dance partner. The World Cup. Memories of Fiji, Samoa and New Zealand. A part-time job that almost became a full-time career. A YouTube video that suddenly took off.

For years, I measured success by promotions, responsibility and whatever the next opportunity happened to be. Lately, I've started asking different questions.

What if success isn't about chasing the next thing?

What if it's about building a life you actually enjoy living?

In this episode, I reflect on balance, identity, work, family, and the surprising realization that somewhere along the way, I may have built a life I don't want to escape from.

From Down Under to Down South is a podcast about culture, identity, family, and life between Australia and America.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

This week in America, I've been thinking a lot about balance, not because anything dramatic has happened. Nobody got arrested. Nothing got set on fire, and there wasn't even a tornado warning. It was just one of those weeks where a few unrelated thoughts started connecting themselves together. You better take cover. So the first one started on the dance floor. My dance partner has been back in England for the last few weeks. So I've been doing lessons with my coach and practicing on my own. And while that's been useful, I realized how much I miss the partnership side of dancing. Because boring dance is kind of funny. People see two people moving around the floor together and assume you're both just memorizing steps. But that's not really what it is. The real challenge is learning how to solve problems together. You learn how the other person moves, how they react when something goes wrong. You learn how to communicate without speaking. And after a while, you start to develop a rhythm together. It's a little bit like having a conversation. You don't notice it while it's happening, but you definitely notice it when it's gone. Now it's also created a little bit of a problem because my dance partner's name is Nikki and my wife's name is Nikki as well. One has an English accent, one has an Australian accent, one can dance, and the other prefers to watch. Which means occasionally I find myself saying things like, I'm training tonight with Nikki, and then immediately have to explain which Nikki it is I'm training with. It's amazing how important context can be there. The other thing I've spent a lot of time doing this week is watching the World Cup. Now, I have always loved the World Cup. I think the first one that I remember was that one in Mexico. When was that? 86, I think. There's something about it that just makes the world feel that little bit smaller. And whenever the soccer is play, I don't care where I am in the world, I'm watching it. And for 90 minutes, it feels like distance completely disappears. Millions of Aussie are watching the same game, talking about the same players, yelling at the same ref, complaining about the same missed opportunities. And somehow I'm connected to all of them from my living room in Tennessee. I love that feeling. And getting my girls involved this year has made it even better. I also find myself watching New Zealand whenever they play, partly because I've always had a bit of a soft spot for the Kiwis. But mostly because hearing God Defend New Zealand immediately takes me back to another chapter of my life before America, before banking and YouTube and kids. Back when I was living in the South Pacific, I spent years living in Fiji and Samoa, working in Tonga and Tuvalu and going back and forwards to New Zealand more times than I can count along the way. Those years really left a mark on me. It's kind of funny how certain places do that. You move away, years pass, life changes, and then one song or accent or one sporting event can suddenly transport you straight back. And those years in the Pacific were some of the most interesting years of my life. I was younger, life felt less predictable, and everything felt like an adventure. And I developed a real affection for Pacific Island culture. That emphasis on family, community, faith, relationships, looking after each other. It's hard to explain unless you've actually experienced it too. Not everybody sees it that way. When I talk about Fiji and Samoa, I often remember the people. Some people remember the infrastructure or the lack of it. And I understand both perspectives. But for me, those places still hold a special place in my memory, which probably explains why I ended up spending an hour this week looking at house prices in New Zealand. Now, I'm not moving. Let's get that out of the way immediately. I've learned that whenever I mention another country, someone decides I've packed my bags and booked the flights. I haven't, but I was curious. And when I started converting New Zealand house prices into US dollars, I found myself thinking, well, that's actually really interesting. Because what appeals to me about New Zealand isn't really New Zealand itself. It's what it represents to me. It's close to Australia. It has strong Pacific influences. And it sits between several different chapters of my life. It reminds me that life can take some unexpected turns. Years ago, I had one of those birth chart readings done. And apparently there are people who can look at where you were born, where the planets were positioned, draw some lines across a map, and then tell you where in the world you're supposed to live. I don't know how much stock I actually put in that result, but according to the reading, the place on this planet that I was supposedly meant to live was New Zealand. The second option was Greenland. Well, one of those seems considerably more likely than the other. I don't know many Australians who dream of moving from the beaches of New South Wales to a giant frozen block of ice. Although I guess living in Greenland would certainly give me some rather unique YouTube content. Today we're comparing Australian summer with six months of darkness. That channel, I think, might actually struggle a little bit. But all of these thoughts kind of led me back to something that's been happening at work. A few weeks ago, I started a part-time job at a storage facility. The plan was simple. Work part-time, bring in some guaranteed income, keep building the channel, keep building the podcast, keep dancing, keep living life. Keep it simple. Then the full-time manager was fired the day before I started, which meant I suddenly became the only person there. Not exactly according to plan. Now, since then, I've been working a lot more hours than I expected. And honestly, I've actually really enjoyed it. I've met some fascinating people, people from all walks of life with some great stories to tell. One of the things I've always enjoyed most about America is the conversations that you can have. You never know who you're going to meet. You never know what story someone is carrying around, especially here in Music City. Because Americans are generally willing to talk to complete strangers, you end up hearing all of these stories. So eventually they offered me the full-time role. And that's where things got interesting. Because for a moment I wanted to say, yes, I'll take it. Not because it was the right decision, but because it was the familiar decision. And I spent most of my adult life throwing myself into work. When I was a chef, I was all in. When I worked in hotel management, I was all in. When I was in banking, I was all in. I don't really have a half-speed setting. If I'm doing something, I tend to commit completely. And I think that's a strength, but it's also gotten me into trouble. Because eventually work stops being something you do and it becomes who you are. And I've spent the last few years trying to untangle all of that. Now the funny part is what happened next. Because the same day I started that storage job, one of my YouTube videos went viral. Hundreds of thousands of views and still climbing, thousands of new subscribers. More views than I ever imagined that that particular video would ever receive. I remember looking at the numbers and laughing because the timing of it all just felt completely ridiculous. Here I was being offered a traditional path, a full-time management position, a familiar identity and routine. And at exactly the same time, the thing that I'd spent the last few years building on the side suddenly showed these huge signs of life. Not what are you good at, not what feels safe, but what do you want? And for the first time in a long time, I actually knew what the answer was. I don't want to disappear into another job. The job isn't the problem. The problem is me. I know exactly what happens when I throw myself completely into something. I become dependable, reliable, helpful, I solve problems, I take ownership and work harder, I stay longer, and eventually everything else starts getting whatever energy I have left over. And I've done that before. And I don't want to do it again because something interesting has recently happened. My life feels balanced. And that's a strange thing for me to say. For years, I was chasing something, whether that be a promotion or an opportunity or a challenge, a destination to move to, there was always a next thing. But right now, where I am in my stage, I work, I dance, I make videos on podcasts, I drive my kids around. I support Nikki when she has clients and I watch soccer. I do the grocery shopping. And yeah, I genuinely enjoy grocery shopping, which probably sounds pretty ridiculous, but I really do. Maybe there's something relaxing about walking through a supermarket deciding what you're going to cook for the week. I don't know. Maybe that's what happens to you when you get older. You stop looking for excitement everywhere and just start appreciating ordinary things. I just don't have an answer for it. What I do know is that I enjoy it. And maybe that's the lesson that I've been learning. For a long time, I measured success by responsibility. How much could I carry? How many people reported directly to me? How important was my title? How much money I was making. These days, the questions are different. What days am I dancing this week? Can I spend time with my family? Can I build something that belongs to me? Can I enjoy my life while I'm living it? Because I think at 52 years old, those questions matter a lot more than what they used to. I don't know what happens next. Maybe the channel keeps growing, maybe it doesn't. Maybe Australia wins the World Cup. Well, let's not get carried away. Maybe I ended back in New Zealand one day. But I've realized something recently. For most of my life, I was focused on building a future. And somewhere along the way, without really noticing it, I built a present that I actually like living in. A wife and two daughters. A dance partner named Nikki and a wife named Nikki. A growing brand and a part-time job with a shopping trolley full of groceries. And it's not a perfect life. But it's a good one. And for the first time in a very long time, I don't feel like I'm trying to escape it. That was this week in America.