I didn’t want the perfect job<\/p>\n
On paper, it was perfect. I was helping founders build companies. I had a title people respected.<\/p>\n
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But within a month of starting full time, I realized I wasn’t happy. The job wasn’t bad<\/a>, and that was part of the problem. I’d spent years chasing it, and when I finally arrived, I felt empty. I began to understand that what I actually wanted wasn’t the job itself, but the validation I thought came with it.<\/p>\n Most days, I sat behind a desk<\/a> from 9 to 5. The parts I loved \u2014 facilitating programs, traveling, working with founders \u2014 made up a small fraction of my week. I realized I had too much energy to sit still in an office for that long.<\/p>\n Then, in 2020, lockdowns hit, and the job became even more soul-crushing because I didn’t have the weekends to escape it all. Even though I figured out that I wasn’t happy nearly right away, it took me more than three years to quit.<\/p>\n I tried everything. For the first two years, I went on this massive journey where I learned how I could start designing a life that feels true for me. I spent around 42,000 Australian dollars, or $30,000, on more than 50 self-help coaches, programs, online learning courses, and books. You name it, I did it. I had all the mental models and frameworks in the world, but little about my reality changed.<\/p>\n I feared change<\/p>\n I began to realize that you don’t rise to the level of your ambitions \u2014 you fall to the level of what feels safe. I was stuck because of fear: fear of judgment, failure, and not being good enough.<\/p>\n In the months before I quit, I challenged myself to do one thing every week that genuinely terrified me. At first, it was small \u2014 posting a vulnerable video online, dancing on my Instagram story, performing magic tricks for strangers in restaurants. Then it escalated to stand-up comedy and singing in public, with no background in either. Within five weeks of that challenge, I’d moved to Bali to work remotely for the firm.<\/p>\n About three months after working from Bali<\/a> in 2023, I got a text from my boss saying we were opening a new office in Sydney and that it was time for me to come back. I remember my body physically froze, and I told her I could not do it.<\/p>\n She told me she saw it coming and was actually proud of me for finally saying it and wanting to move on to do different things<\/a>.<\/p>\n I battled imposter syndrome<\/p>\n Huzz said he started DJing in Bali and Thailand but did it for free for the first few times.<\/p>\n Nic Huzz<\/p>\n I didn’t have an alternate plan<\/a> for months and was living off my savings. I went from earning 85,000 Australian dollars a year to earning nothing. For months, I lived on a few hundred dollars a week. Twice, my bank account dropped close to zero.<\/p>\n As part of my challenge, I had started bringing a couple of silent disco headphones to the beaches in Bali<\/a> and Thailand and was asking strangers to join me as I danced. More and more people kept joining each time I did it, and a friend suggested I start taking donations. My imposter syndrome<\/a> crept in, and I told them that I was just doing it for fun. I was so conditioned to associate work with suffering that it felt unfair to make money while having fun.<\/p>\n I finally listened to my friends about the donations. At the fourth or fifth disco, I remember making more money in an hour than I did in a day at my corporate job. I started running silent disco sessions and was even asked if I could rent out my headsets to others.<\/p>\n At one point, a club owner asked if I could provide them with 300 headsets, and I had to go to the best bank in the world \u2014 the bank of mom and dad \u2014 for a loan to buy 250 more headsets. The loan was worth more than I had earned in the past 12 months, but it helped me eventually support major conferences in Bali, such as AWS, Amazon, and IBM.<\/p>\n Last year, I made around 30,000 Australian dollars, which is a lot less than I made in Sydney. But I wake up excited every day and get to choose where I live and how I work.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n