"Damnit," I whispered under my breath as I looked down at my feet. I was standing barefoot in the pouring Sydney rain. It was April 2017. I was 25 years old.
I ran the remaining stretch back to the office.
"What happened to you?" Pandora asked as she surveyed my appearance.
"My shoe broke as I was walking to the train station," I pouted. "Are you working late tonight?"
"Bryce will be another hour or so. Let's have dinner at our place. We’ll give you a lift."
I turned around, sat at a spare desk, and opened my laptop.
"Bad weather?"
A man in his mid-thirties was sitting opposite me on the island of desks.
"Terrible," I laughed. "Are you new here? I'm Nikki, by the way."
"Hey, I'm Dave. And no — I'm just in Sydney for the day. I thought I'd swing by to check this place out."
He asked me what I was working on, and I showed him. I asked him what he was working on, and he showed me. We began chatting about startup stuff — experiences, lessons, the usual. And then he said it...
"Oh! You're Nikki Durkin! I read your failure story years ago and sent it to a bunch of people. You really captured the emotional rollercoaster."
I blushed. I still found it weird when people remembered that story so long after it was published. During my nomad travels in the years to come, I'd meet people in different countries who'd say the same thing: "Oh! You're Nikki Durkin! I remember your failure story. It helped me in a hard time."
"So do you work from Sydney now?" Dave asked.
"Yeah," I replied. "But I'm heading to Chiang Mai soon."
"How long will you be in Thailand?"
"Maybe two or three months. I don't know. I figured I'd just buy a ticket and see if I like it."
An idea popped into Dave's mind. "If you're open to relocating, you should come to Brisbane. They have a grant program designed to attract entrepreneurs who can share their knowledge and help grow the local startup community. I'm sure they'd love to have the Nikki Durkin."
***
Seven months later, I was standing in the kitchen of a large three-bedroom apartment on the forty-fourth floor of a beautiful Brisbane building overlooking the botanical gardens. I felt two arms wrap around me.
"Move out of the way," Lucas whispered in my ear as he shuffled me to the side. "I need to get to the cupboard."
I turned around to see a tall, athletic man with tanned skin and a handsome face staring back at me. He had muscles in places I didn't even know existed. "Geez! Put a shirt on," I teased. "Have some compassion for my poor housemates."
"I'm trying to cook you risotto in the middle of a Queensland summer and it's rather humid in here," he replied as he located the salt.
"I honestly don't know how you survive in that avatar. You're basically a furnace."
He made a stupid Zoolander face. "So hot right now."
I giggled. "Show me the face again."
"Blue steel or magnum?"
"Blue steel."
He turned away from me then looked over his shoulder, lips pursed.
I burst out laughing. "You're kinda fun for an academic," I said. "And almost a Ph.D.!"
"I'm so close to finishing! Did you read my thesis? What did you think?"
"It's great, as far as I am concerned. But I know nothing about all the rules and regulations of academia. Word counts and formatting requirements and-"
"Ugh, I know. Count yourself lucky. That's probably the worst part of it."
"Well, I like your perspective," I said. "Even if academia forces you to express it in a boring way."
"Well, I like you." He wrapped his arms around me. "Now sit back and relax. Read something while I finish this."
I dashed to my room and roamed around my book collection before picking up the first option: The Holographic Universe. No, that wasn't a good book for the occasion. I preferred reading that one while marinating in a hot bath.
Underneath it sat a little book of philosophy — On Bullshit, by Harry G. Frankfurt. Lucas was reading it in a coffee shop the day we met. He'd given it to me when he walked me home.
He was smart, and I liked that about him. Driven, disciplined, focused. He had a deep sense of empathy and compassion for those around him and a strong conviction in his morals and values. We'd hit it off immediately.
He was also one of the sharpest, wittiest men I'd ever had the pleasure of flirting with. You could write a novel from the banter we exchanged. It was rare to meet someone not only smart but creative with their words — twisting them into new combinations and puns and setting up the punchline multiple moves ahead. Not to mention, English wasn't his first language. He spoke five in total. Typical European.
But we were also fundamentally different. He was an athlete in his mid-thirties who competed at an international level. I witnessed the level of passion and dedication required to achieve that goal of his. Sport was his life.
I, on the other hand, enjoyed movement as much as any healthy person does. But you wouldn't find me voluntarily torturing my body, and that made all the difference. No thanks. I was a nerd. I preferred pushing the limits of my mind.
So it had started recently and it was going to end soon. We were from two different worlds. I stayed up late on school nights; he was asleep by eight-thirty. My life was dynamic and unpredictable; his was structured and disciplined. I was Chaos; he was Order.
Plus, he was moving interstate in six months for a new job. He told me that on our second date as we walked through the botanical gardens together. Lucas was the first man I'd gone out with since Jesse, and the irony of the situation was not lost on me. Different places, different faces, same thing. My friends joked that I was a magnet for men with expiry dates — an escape plan agreed upon ahead of time.
I think it's because I'm terrified no one will ever stay. Who am I to demand permanency from an ever-changing universe? Everything always de-creates and re-creates and changes form. Everything and everyone I have ever loved, save my family, has always shifted and moved around with such fluidity, fading in and out of focus in my life. My businesses, my projects, my relationships, my hobbies and interests, my dreams and goals. One minute I'm obsessed with painting, or sewing, or coding — and the next, I couldn't care less about it. Instead, I'll be consumed by a strange fascination with the natural sciences, and you'll find me up at three in the morning reading about Lorentz transformations.
At 26 years old, I hadn't yet learned how to love without attachment; how to let go with grace; how to softly surrender to the whirlpool of fate that swirled on the tip of God's paintbrush.
***
After Brisbane, I moved to Medellin, Colombia, in May 2018.
A few months after I landed, Zac's friend, Toto, came to town. Toto was a German guy with wild hair who made his money online. He was passing through Medellin for a few nights before heading to Kenya.
"Oh, what's in Kenya?" I asked. A big group of us were eating lunch in the mezzanine area of a Peruvian restaurant. Our table was surrounded by leafy ferns, vines, and trees — the typical jungle aesthetic of our neighborhood.
"I started a school there for Kenyan children. They've just finished building some new classrooms and I'm overdue for a visit."
Before long, we'd agreed to pilot some pro-bono coding classes for his students. If Toto's team could sort out a few laptops and an internet connection, my teachers on the other side of the world could teach them one of the most in-demand skills of the 21st century. We marveled at the wonders of modern technology as we ate paella and laughed with our friends.
"Oh!" Zac exclaimed as he turned to Toto. "I have to tell you about the building I want to buy. It's going to be glorious."
Ah, yes. That building. It was funny how that project came about.
You see, several years earlier, Zac had purchased one of two penthouses in an apartment block. The president of the building, Ronaldo, owned the other one.
Ronaldo hated Zac, to put it lightly. The entire building was filled with rich, old Colombian couples who were very Catholic, traditional, and set in their ways. They couldn't understand why a man older than thirty wasn't married with multiple children.
Furthermore, everyone in the building thought Zac's personal assistant, Carolina, was his mistress. She'd work from his apartment late into the night. The residents of the building would ask Carolina why she wasn't home looking after her husband. She was 24 years old. Needless to say, Zac did not appreciate the insinuation that he was sleeping with his staff, nor their sexist bullshit.
"They're all infuriating!" Zac raged to me as he paced around the terrace one evening. I'd frequently find him having passionate arguments with fictional people somewhere in the apartment — a sure sign he was furious about something. Sometimes it was law enforcement, other times it was a random person on the internet who was 'obviously wrong,' and that day it was Ronaldo. Ronaldo had originally constructed the apartment block back in the Pablo Escobar era, and he basically controlled the whole building. Nothing happened unless Ronaldo approved of it.
"I despise them all," Zac continued. "Yesterday, Mery was in the elevator talking to the other maids and cooks, and everyone was gossiping about how their employers grope them. Mery told them I'd never laid a hand on her. No one believed her! Apparently, getting sexually harassed is just part of the job down here. It's fucked up!"
A sudden burst of inspiration hit him. "Nikki!" he said as he turned to me with a glint in his eye — a glint I was all too familiar with. "Nikki! Nikki! I've figured out how to solve this problem. I'm going to buy up all the apartments in this building, one by one. Then I will never have to see any of these people again."
I thought his solution was overkill. But a few months later, a For Sale sign appeared for the apartment directly below Zac's penthouse.
Unfortunately, word got out that Zac was interested in buying the place. Ronaldo wasn't going to let that happen. He held an emergency meeting with all the residents in the building. They all made a pact not to sell to Zac.
"They want a nice, traditional Colombian family to buy the place," Zac ranted to me. "I'll give them a nice, traditional Colombian family!" He called his lawyer, who set up a shell company. Then he held a casting call and hired three suitable actors to attend the open house and schmooze the sellers: a Colombian mother, a Colombian father, and their cute little Colombian daughter. "I can't wait to see the look on Ronaldo's face when he knocks on the door to welcome the new family with a home-cooked meal and I'm just standing there, giving him the finger."
It was petty. But as much as Zac complained about Ronaldo, I knew he loved the game. Zac has zero respect for arbitrary rules, yet his internal principles and sense of honor are rock solid — a personality trait that's difficult for strangers to discern from the outside, and often leaves him misunderstood. Zac needed an opponent to outsmart — an opportunity for him to flex his sharp mind and creativity — so the game gave him one. Ronaldo was a symbolic representation of everything Zac stood against.
The day before the paperwork was due to be signed, the sellers decided they wanted to keep the apartment after all. "Fuck!" Zac yelled off the terrace as he angrily punched the air. "Fucking Ronaldo!"
"Do you think he figured it out?" I asked.
"I don't know. Everything was going through the shell company and the law firm. Fuck. I need to let off some steam. Be right back." He promptly exited the terrace and walked into his bedroom. A few minutes later, I heard the screams and wails of a woman being murdered.
"For the love of God!" I cried as Zac re-emerged from his room. "Can you please stop blowing those goddamn death whistles!"
"What? How did you know-"
"Because everyone can hear them! In case you haven't noticed, they are very, very loud. There's a reason the Aztecs blew them while riding into war. They're scary and horrible!"
"Huh? I've been blowing them in my soundproofed closet."
I laughed. "Whoever soundproofed your closet did a shit job. You can hear those whistles from a few blocks over. It sounds like your apartment is haunt-"
We both looked at each other with the same realization.
"How long has that old couple lived in the apartment downstairs?" I asked, suspiciously.
"Maybe twenty years or so," Zac replied.
"And when did you start blowing those death whistles?"
"A few months ago," Zac said. "I was perfecting the design on my 3D printer so I had to test them several times a day in my closet until I got it right."
"And when did you stop blowing them every day?"
"A few weeks ago, when the negotiations started. I was busy."
"Zac," I sighed. "No wonder your neighbors hate you. The old Catholic couple probably vacated the home they'd lived in for twenty years because they thought it was haunted."
Zac grinned. "Maybe I should start blowing them agai-"
"No, Zac! Geez. You're such an asshole."
"But-"
"No," I said firmly. "You need a new solution to your little Ronaldo problem. Let them keep their apartment in peace."
"Fine." He crossed his arms, sat back on the terrace lounge, and looked out across the city. Before long, his eyes fixated on a point further up the hill, a few blocks away from us. "There," Zac said, pointing at a huge, abandoned twelve-story building. "I'm going to buy that building."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because then I can own the whole building and rent it out to like-minded people who don't sexually harass their staff. It's a brilliant plan. Fuck trying to buy this whole building one apartment at a time. I'll get some investors on board and buy that building all at once."
"Well, that escalated quickly," I sighed.
Zac looked at me with his stupid troublemaker grin, then back up at the building. "Shall we trespass now or trespass later?"
Twenty minutes later, we were standing in front of two large gates. They were padlocked and chained together. Barbed wire curled around the top of the fence that stretched along the perimeter of the massive property. Five furious rottweilers bounded up to the gate, snarling and barking angrily in our faces.
"Tranquilo," I cooed as the dogs continued to growl and snap. Zac waved to a man who sat at the foot of the building, beckoning him over. The stranger wore filthy clothes and his hair hadn't been washed in weeks. He calmed the dogs and began speaking to Zac in rapid Spanish.
The gates opened a few minutes later. He led Zac and me into the half-finished building, pointed to a broad flight of stairs that ran up the center of the dilapidated structure, then left us to ourselves.
"Guess what?" Zac said as we began climbing the stairs. There were no safety railings. The walls of the building appeared to be floor-to-ceiling glass — minus the glass. One could easily fall to their death if they took a single misstep. "This building's been abandoned for eight years. Eight years, Nikki! A beautiful place like this! What a waste!"
We eventually reached the top of the staircase which merged onto a vast open rooftop. I raced Zac over to the edge and sat on the ground, right near the ledge. The sun was setting. The view was breathtaking.
"I thought my apartment had the best vista in the city, but this is next level," Zac sighed. "I could turn this whole roof into a garden and put the pool over there. And why not install a bar over there? And I can have a co-working space on the bottom level, and floor-to-ceiling glass windows in all the apartments. It's going to be incredible!"
I'd always been fascinated by Zac's ability to charge fearlessly into the unknown. The man had balls of steel, and he saw opportunity everywhere. His projects didn't always work out — I'd seen him brush with failure several times over the years. Yet, like a cat, Zac always landed on his feet.
"And," he continued, "I want to buy that patch of land on the hill up there, then 3D print a castle. I've always wanted to get married in my own castle." He pointed to the mountainous escarpment on the other side of the city where we sometimes went paragliding on the weekend.
"Is that what you want?" I asked. "To get married?"
He let out a long sigh. "Marriage, children, a family, a castle, a legacy. I want it all, Nikki. I want to build a life with someone. It's just hard, y'know? My home base is here in Colombia, everyone in my family except you is in Australia, my friends are spread throughout the world, and I spend a good portion of each year traveling. And I don't want to marry an unattached 21-year-old who hasn't lived a life of her own yet. I need a complementary partner who knows who she is, but those women have their own goals and ambitions. I can't expect them to drop everything to come traveling with me. I'm looking for a unicorn."
"At least you've got time to find her," I said. "You're a man. You can run around the world building your career and legacy, then settle down in your forties when you meet the right woman. You have plenty of time. I don't have that luxury."
"Your life doesn't stop when you hit thirty, Nikki."
"No, no, just listen," I continued. "I've thought very deeply about this issue of growing up. If you're a woman who wants to have children in her early thirties, you need to have your shit together a good ten years earlier than men do. You, Zachary Borrowdale, have ten more years to take risks, and try things, and fail, and find yourself, and build financial security — all without considering the needs of anyone else. Ten years! That is double the time I get!"
"Firstly," Zac replied, "being a man is kinda brutal. You're nothing unless you make something of yourself. No one cares about you unless you achieve."
"Wait a minute," I said. "I cared about you before you'd achieved anything-"
"-but as a woman, you inherently have value to society regardless of anything you achieve. Women and children board the lifeboats first, while good men get marched off to war. Besides, you can still achieve things in your thirties."
I paused in thought. "I don't know if that's true for me. I see this image in the media of a modern Wonder Woman who can do it all, and do it all at the same time. She can grow a human inside of her, give birth, nurse, cook healthy meals, get back in shape, maintain a social life, and kill it in the workplace — then do it all again with her next child.
And then I'm told that women can do it all because we're excellent multitaskers. But I can't multitask! Seriously. I'm the world's worst multitasker. If you give me one ball to juggle, I will juggle the fuck out of that ball. But give me multiple balls to juggle and I will drop them all, then self-destruct. Does that make me a bad woman?"
"No..."
"I bet my sister could do it. When I think of a modern woman, I think of her. She is killing it in her career. She's grown a startup to many tens of million in sales. Yet she still has time to look hot, stay healthy, socialize, remember to buy gifts for her friend's birthdays, organize bridal showers, go on weekend wine-tasting trips and long annual holidays, call Mum, and do just about everything else. Plus, she has the biggest heart of anyone I know.
But that's just not me. I'm not a good 'modern woman' like her. I can't multithread my life like she can. I have one major priority at a time and that priority gets all of my focus."
"What's your point?"
"My point is... we're not kids anymore, Zac. I'm 27 years old. If I want certain things in my life, like marriage and children, I need to stop fucking around with all these crazy high-risk creative projects and optimize my life for some semblance of security. Most people who share our nomadic lifestyle are men, and I don't see them having to make the same trade-offs in their decision-making that I have to."
Zac stared off into the distance.
"What?" I asked.
"Oh, I'm just imagining you as a 1950s housewife baking in the kitchen. Then your husband returns home and you say to him 'Honey, I had the most brilliant idea about Einstein's theory of relativity as the scones were rising.' And then he takes you in his arms and says, 'Darling, don't be silly. Women don't have ideas-'"
"Hey!-"
"-And then you get upset with him, and he says 'Sweetie, why don't you do something useful with all those revolutionary ideas and emotions and feelings. Just whisk them together and put them in a Bundt cake for me.'"
"You're such a dick," I laughed.
"Mmm... tastes like misogyny," Zac grinned. "So, what are you going to do about your little life dilemma?"
"I dunno," I shrugged, "I guess... I want to get married and have a family. I do. I just..."
"You just what? What do you want, Nikki?"
I looked at him. "I want everything. Marriage, children, a family, a home, a legacy. But I feel like I'm playing this game with a stopwatch. And there's so much more chaos for me to explore first. There are more big risks for me to take. I feel like there's something I need to do alone before I'm ready for that kind of multiplayer quest in my life."
"Like what? What do you have to do?"
"I dunno," I replied as I tossed a pebble in the air. "It's just a feeling. I think I have to find myself; save myself."
"Save yourself from what?"
"The oblivion of non-realization."
***
The air whipped my face. I held on to Tyler's backpack as we zoomed up the mountain on his motorbike.
It was my last Sunday in Colombia before heading to a Muay Thai camp in Phuket, Thailand. Tyler thought it would be fun to have breakfast and do some work at his favorite Harry Potter-themed cafe up the mountain.
He and I had become good friends over the past four months. We spent a lot of time working in cafes together alongside his dogs. Occasionally we'd go salsa dancing with Willis, Tyler's thirty-something-year-old English roommate. Willis would twirl me around in circles as a live band played in the background, and I'd follow his lead.
I liked Tyler's little crew of misfits and adventurers — people who were working on all kinds of digital businesses or just freelancing remotely as they traveled. I met many such people in Medellin.
As we whizzed up the mountain on his motorbike, I recalled a passage I'd read years earlier in Conversations With God.
The people who make a living doing what they love are the people who insist on doing so. They don't give up. They never give in. They dare life not to let them do what they love.
Some other motorbikes zipped past us and Tyler changed lanes. A beautiful view of the city emerged from behind the trees.
That passage, I thought. Why had it not worked for me?
I was frustrated with my life, to be honest. A year earlier, all I could think about and talk about and focus on was my online coding school. It brought me such joy! I'd be working on it 24/7.
And it took off! It started doing well!
But then that fucking ocean in my mind roared, and the wind changed direction, and suddenly I was obsessed with something completely different.
I was supposed to be of service to humanity somehow. I was supposed to do something good with my life that helped people. Wasn't this it? I'd followed my curiosity, hadn't I? I'd spent hours upon hours upon hours building curriculum, and coding Minecraft modding libraries, and designing, and marketing, and doing customer service, and teaching, and training, and documenting — all the things.
But after spending that much time playing Minecraft with imaginative 8-year-olds, I began to notice parallels between the computer game and physical reality. I started viewing atoms as Minecraft blocks, self-organizing into higher and higher states of order. I began to notice deep, emergent patterns in the universe.
And suddenly I wasn't fascinated with my coding school anymore. I tried to be. I tried so, so hard to be. I should've been, but I wasn't. I became fixated on deeper questions.
I fell out of love with my business — another transient whirlpool in my life that was destined to dissolve when God's paintbrush pulled in a different direction.
Tyler changed lanes again.
My mind wandered back to the previous morning when a slice of avocado toast was placed in front of me. The plate had little flowers on the side. Tyler would always lament that his avocado toast never came with flowers, but mine did.
I looked up to see Julian, the barista at my favorite local coffee shop, handing me my food.
"Gracias, Julian. Eso es delicioso."
"Con gusto, Nikki." He flashed me a big smile.
"Me voy de Colombia el Jueves. Te voy a extrañar." I'm leaving Colombia on Thursday. I'm going to miss you.
Julian gestured to my phone, opened Google translate, and wrote me a message.
He was right. How wise. Was I not the luckiest person in the world? Born into a life and a time when I had the opportunity for this much freedom?
I had to choose this lifestyle. I did. I worked hard and I took risks. It didn't fall out of the sky and into my lap.
But I was also born into circumstances where I could believe the world was my oyster. My existence was full of hope and optimism. It must look completely different from Julian's perspective. He brings flowers to the wandering Australian girl because he knows they make her smile. Meanwhile, he can't fathom traveling the world on his salary.
What a privileged life I lead.
I saved his message and added it to my notes. Maybe one day I'll share Julian's insight with the world, I thought. Maybe there's something we all can learn from the joyful attitude of this Colombian barista.
A flurry of neurons fired in my brain, alerting me of a new connection. I flipped backward through my notes and came across a passage from Conversations With God.
Your soul doesn’t care what you do for a living — and when your life is over, neither will you. Your soul cares only about what you’re being while you’re doing whatever you’re doing.
It is a state of beingness the soul is after, not a state of doingness.
What is the soul seeking to be?
Me.
You.
Yes, Me. Your soul is Me, and it knows it. What it is doing, is trying to experience that. And what it is remembering is that the best way to have this experience is by not doing anything. There is nothing to do but to be.
Be what?
Whatever you want to be. Happy. Sad. Weak. Strong. Joyful. Vengeful. Insightful. Blind. Good. Bad. Male. Female. You name it. I mean that literally. You name it.
***
I sat on the floor of my Phuket apartment, my face in my hands, raging at my soul.
I just wanted to feel like I was useful to the world. What did I have to do to feel useful to the world?
Just be, Wisdom whispered. Just be.
No, Wisdom! I want to know what I have to do. What do I have to do to finally feel like I matter? Like I'm valuable? Like I'm in my element? Like my life has a purpose? What do I have to do to finally feel proud of myself? To finally feel like I'm not an imposter? A loser? A failure? Tell me what to do and I'll do it!
I was so sick of working hard and developing a skill, then having my passion change form, constantly manifesting in different areas. Every time I applied myself diligently and began to feel successful with a project, my curiosity would pull me in a different direction. I felt like I was being dragged through a winding path, over rocks with jagged edges that left scars in my confidence and ripped at my self-worth.
But for what purpose? It didn't make any sense. I'd spent four years running around, observing things, trying things, learning things. What was the point of it all, anyway? What was the point? I couldn't see the bigger picture. My life was a mish-mash of random brushstrokes. It was chaos.
Nikki, my soul whispered. You tell a tragic tale, but you're lying to yourself. I gave you The Prophecy. You've seen flashbacks of your future. You already know how this story ends. Yet you're feigning ignorance so you don't have to come to terms with your own power. You're not scared that you're wrong about this — you're scared that you're right. You're scared that you could strike one match and blow up the whole world. Yet know this: the privilege of a lifetime is to become Who You Really Are, and the most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely. Master this lesson and you'll set yourself free.
But I couldn't hear the whisper of my soul over the frantic screams of my ego. I leaned back against the wall and began to cry. Alone, in the middle of the day, in my bedroom. I'd been crying a lot lately.
“What the fuck do you want from me?!” I yelled at my soul. The sobs were erupting from my mouth. I was a mess. “I don't understand what you want from me! I've followed you around the goddamn world and here I am, miserable and alone on the floor of a Thai apartment.”
I want to return you to yourself, my soul smiled. I want to-
“Where's all the success I was promised, huh? I followed you, and followed you, and followed you, and you promised me it would lead to something. You promised me my dreams would come true if I just had the courage to pursue them. I trusted you and you lied. I've followed you for a decade and all I have are some beautiful and bitter-sweet memories.
I followed you with 99dresses, and that failed. I followed you with Jesse, and he left. I followed you with all the different skills I've learned and then lost interest in. I followed you with CodeMakers, and now I've suddenly fallen out of love with that business too and it's breaking my heart. It's too painful. I can't bear it.”
That project has served its purpose in your life. It's time to let it go and move to the next phase of your journ—
“—And now, to top it all off, I'm starting to question my entire choice of career. I don't even think I want to build these tech products anymore, and I've been doing this since I was a teen. Why do I feel a longing to write, and teach, and talk instead? Why do I feel a longing to tell stories, and make people laugh, and make them cry, and help them see the world in a different way? Why? I'm not perfect. Look at me. I'm a fucking wreck right now. I oscillate between melancholy and euphoria. What can anyone learn from me?
Fuck you, intuition. Fuck you, curiosity. Fuck you, passion. Fuck you, soul. I thought you were supposed to be looking out for me. Whatever happened to that, huh? Whatever happened to 'follow your heart, and everything will all work out?'”
Oh, I am looking out for you. Just let your ego throw this tantrum, then it's time to pack up and keep moving. The next clue is in Sydney. Go home, say hello to your family, and start looking for a job. I know that sounds like failure to your ego, but trust me: basecamp is right on the other side of this dark ravine. The shortcut to heaven runs straight through hell—
“—I just don't get it. I don't get it. I'm done. I'm sick of this. Do you hear me, God? If you want someone to solve this fucking riddle, maybe you should pay them for it. Isn't that what academics are for? Don't they get paid for all this shit I'm doing for free? I'm twenty-seven and I'm getting older and I have to think about my future. I can't keep going on like this — being a slave to your childish agenda. I can't keep treating the world like a wondrous playground. Can you please just stop this storm raging in my mind and let me be? My God, what is wrong with me!?”
***
Bam!
A glove punched me in the left cheek. My head swung to the side like a rag doll.
I bent over, dizzy, disoriented. A blonde Norwegian woman peered over me, holding her mouthguard.
"Are you okay?" Helena asked.
"Yeah, fine." I instinctually checked my nose. It wasn't broken, thank God — but my bones were throbbing. Even though I wore thick shin pads, my legs were perpetually black and blue from several hours a day of training.
I rubbed my left cheek, straightened myself up, and regained my fighting stance.
Helena grinned.
"Again," the trainer said as he watched on.
***
I returned to Colombia towards the end of 2019 — just over a year after I'd left. I was 28 years old.
When I arrived, Zac was busy preparing his apartment for an important guest. His long-distance girlfriend, whom he'd met in Europe through mutual friends, was coming to stay. In all the years I'd known Zac I'd never seen him this serious about a woman.
"What do you think?" he asked as he gestured towards a newly potted tree on the terrace — a beautiful one that sprouted berries in the spring. "Is it too much? I'm going to put fairy lights on it so it looks a little magical. I've just installed a new fountain over there with the soothing sound of running water. She likes to meditate so I want this to be a relaxing space for her to do that in the morning. And I've got more plants arriving this afternoon, and another outdoor sun-lounge to go over here. And I'm going to move my antique bust of that Aristotle-looking philosopher over there in the corner-"
"Really?" I asked. "In the corner?"
His eyes darted in my direction. "What's wrong with the corner?"
"Well, the corner is right next to the lounge. You're going to be making out with your woman while a dead philosopher stares very intensely at you both."
"What?! He won't be staring. You've got your angles all wrong." Zac wheeled the bust over to the corner on a trolley and hoisted it onto its mantle.
I jumped onto the outdoor lounge. "Observe closely, dear brother. Your makeout session will begin like this with your arm casually draped around her shoulder as you beguile her with the magnificent view. Then the kissing will begin, and that will inevitably lead to some straddling, and someone is going to end up lying on the lounge like this with the other person on top of them. And this whole time you'll have an ancient philosopher staring right at you like a voyeuristic pervert. It's a mood killer — unless you have a fetish for stone statues. And hey — if that's your kink then no judgment. I'm just looking out for your love life."
"You seem to understand the pragmatics of this in visceral detail." His eyes narrowed in suspicion. "How often have you been slutting it up on my lounge?"
"Me?! On this lounge? With a man?" I gasped. "No, no, Zachary. I'm very innocent and pure. You know me — I always wear white to subtly signal my virtue to potential male suitors."
Zac stared at me, deadpan. "You are literally wearing a red dress right now."
"Oh! Well, would you look at that! I guess we do live in the 21st century after all. I can guarantee you the various past and present gentlemen of this household have done more 'slutting it up' on this lounge than I ever have. And now that Rick and Brennan are here with their girlfriends, and yours is about to arrive, I'm basically the seventh wheel in this communal living situation." I made a broken heart with my fingers and pouted. "Forever alone."
Zac held his hands up in surrender. "I'm not judging. You can slut it up as much or as little as you like."
"Thank you, Zachary. I will continue to do just that. Also, in conclusion, you are wrong about the statue. I can guarantee it will creep her out."
"Hmm..." Zac mused. "I'll position him off to the side so he's looking straight over there." He pointed to the abandoned building he'd considered purchasing the previous year.
The day after our deep-and-meaningful discussion on the roof of that dilapidated structure, Zac began putting the wheels in motion to research the building and potentially subdivide the block of land. At one point, I walked downstairs in the morning to find ten old, serious Colombian men sitting around the large wooden dining room table. They were all watching Zac as he pointed to a slideshow presentation on the TV.
"So," Zac said, "as you can see, you're all getting fucked" — he made a dramatic hip-thrusting gesture — "by this one shareholder who won't get on board."
The old man at the head of the table paused for a moment, looking stern. A second later, he burst into laughter so deep that it rocked his little body back and forth.
Before long, Mexican property developers were swooping in, and parties from all over the place wanted a piece of this hot new property deal. The rich, old Colombian man was the key to the whole thing. He refused to do business with anyone other than the 'Australiano loco' because Zac once made him laugh with some dramatic humping gestures.
As Zac had learned over the years, doing business in Colombia was like entering a strange world where left was right, and right was left, and equity was split in completely irrational ways, and piles of cash casually slid under tables. In the end, the deal was put on ice.
"I think that's a better position," I agreed, gesturing to the statue. "He's looking wistfully off into the distance now."
I curled up on the lounge. Zac sat next to me as we looked out over the city towards the vast green mountains in the background.
I smiled. "We've come a long way from our little country towns in Australia, haven't we? And only eighteen months ago, you were telling me you wanted to meet someone special. And now you have this amazing new woman in your life! I hope you've found yourself a unicorn."
"I'm really serious about her," Zac sighed. "I don't quite understand why she's serious about me... but I'm just gonna roll with it. I don't think she's figured out that I'm an asshole yet."
"A gentlemanly asshole," I corrected him. "Hopefully she's the one for you. Then you just need to worry about your legacy. Speaking of which, do you have any gin downstairs? Preferably not of the Borrowdale Liquor variety. Can't say I'm a fan..."
Zac gave me the finger in mock retaliation. Over the past year, he'd started a new company importing his own brand of liquor into Colombia. His business partner, a local liquor veteran, had approached Zac about the opportunity when the government began cracking down on illegal contraband alcohol. Zac considered himself a connoisseur of premium products but the premium end of the market was already saturated. An opportunity only existed for a cheap, low-quality mainstream brand of generic cocktail spirits — the kind of hangover-inducing formula we used to drink as teenagers. Zac's local team developed the product and came up with the brand name Borrowdale Liquor, much to Zac's dismay. They thought it sounded classy. Zac cared deeply about his legacy, and having his last name printed on a bottle of flavored ethanol was not part of the plan.
"Oh, actually," I said as I pulled up some notes on my phone. "I took the liberty of brainstorming some potential taglines for your new business. Do any of these resonate with your vision?"
Borrowdale Liquor — It'll do.
Borrowdale Liquor — It won't make you blind.
Borrowdale Liquor — At least it's legal.
Borrowdale Liquor — Drown your shame with ours.
Borrowdale Liquor — If you lower your standards, we'll lower our prices.
We both doubled over in laughter. I ended up in stitches on the floor.
"Ah, Nikki," Zac sighed. "I'm not saying I hate you, but I would definitely unplug your life support to charge my phone." He threw a berry at my head. "Now back to the topic of romance. My friend, Eman, is visiting soon. One could describe him as a smart and ridiculously good-looking Argentinian gentleman. I think you guys will hit it off. Do you want me to set you up?"
"Thanks, Zac," I replied. "But the game has a habit of distracting me with intelligent, handsome, charming princes who swoop in out of nowhere. I'm putting the pieces of my life back together and focusing on myself right now. The last thing I need is a whirlwind holiday romance."
"I'm warning you," Zac grinned, "Eman has a certain effect on the ladies. I predict you'll be slutting it up on this lounge in no time."
"No, I won't."
"Yes, you will."
"No, I won't."
I have a knack for precognition, but I completely missed the mark with that one. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.