#2 My story: overcoming being broke & lost in life to creating my DREAM reality of freedom
Episode Summary & Links
All the juicy details of my rollercoaster 20s that have shaped me to my current evolution. When people ask me where I'm from or what's my story, I usually give a different two sentence variation every time... but I wanted to share a more in-depth peek into my freedom-driven, volatile, nomadic life :)
Some fun (and some unglam) things I dive into:
from my childhood to those cringe-worthy high school years
my competitive swimming years and what that taught me
how I went from studying Medicine to Business to almost not finishing my 2nd degree
my experience living out of a car in the wealthy city of Stockholm
why I moved to Germany and learnt German (and then Spanish)
feeling lonely, misunderstood and how I got through my depression phase
how I started my freelance career and the challenges in the beginning
all the random jobs in various countries I had in between just to make ends meet
growing my web design biz, experiencing burnout and finding my fire for life again
Let's continue the conversation over at:
https://www.instagram.com/emilypeilan/
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Episode Transcript
Emily: Hello, my beautiful friends and welcome back. This is going to be a solo episode and we are going to dive a little bit deeper into my story. It's a bit of a. Rollercoaster one with a lot of moving and and yeah, so like I feel like people, a lot of people think of me as extroverted, like pretty out there confident.
I even had someone say to me recently that I'm like really good at marketing myself and selling myself. And I was like really surprised because. , I actually have known myself or kind of see myself as rather introverted and shy. I suppose I just do things that make me feel uncomfortable enough times and occasionally I kind of have to pretend to be confident.
And I mean, you know, to be blatantly truthful with you even recording these podcast episodes, like before I hit record. , my heart is like racing and I'm like, oh, I really wanna like, do this. Well, I, I don't wanna do like too many takes. I want to, you know, I like overthink myself sometimes. And and and yeah, so I, I freak out a lot all the time,
And it's fascinating that a lot of people think. , you know, don't, don't really see that side, which is, which is a good thing, I suppose. But, you know, just know that beneath that, I freak out a lot. . But I suppose also confidence it comes from experience that you can't just. Inherit and have confidence without the necessary life experience to, to back yourself.
So by doing all the things outside your comfort zone, I feel like it's like the best way to, to build confidence. And I suppose I really challenged myself in my twenties and That really gives me a lot of confidence in, in the life decisions that I make and just how I show up in life in general. Cuz I faced so much already, and, and the little things just don't seem like such a big deal anymore, if you know what I mean.
But but yeah, I mean, coming back to. Like, I haven't always been this way. Like in high school I was the most quiet, introverted or wallflower, like awkward as fuck. I was, ah, I can't, I cringe to just even think How I was back in high school really , moving on. I, however, I had a really happy childhood during my, so I was born in Singapore between the ages of like zero and five.
My family moved around a lot, so it was kind of between like Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai. We spent like, I think it was like half a year in, in Germany slash France. I remember being in France. And I remember we had cousins in Canada that we visited, maybe the UK as well. So it was like a lot of kind of different moving parts.
Exciting new worlds to, to take in as a, as a child. And when I turned five, we moved to New Zealand and basically stayed there for the rest of my adolescent years. We spent three years in Auckland and then the rest of my high school. in a primary high school year and a couple few uni university years in Dunedin which is like down in the south island.
Beautiful, beautiful place. By the way, just all of New Zealand is beautiful. But despite living in a really beautiful country, I have to say, I had a rather dark and depressive. Adolescent years, like I battled with a lot of things. I think. I remember battling with an eating disorder. as well.
And kind of pressure from my parents or, or my mother who was really, really strict and high, had really high expectations of me, which I kind of felt like a failure because I couldn't meet her high ex. Expectations. And I was also and still am very strong-willed and I went back down from something I believe in my heart is right.
And so I just felt a lot of, mm, I've had this kind of lifelong feeling as well of not belonging to anywhere, to anything, to anyone really. I think with, I had a really disjointed. childhood, like I mentioned. And I think perhaps this definitely attributed to the fact of like not belonging to a community.
Perhaps. I think I might record actually a future episode on this, on like, you know, this, this idea of like home belonging and having this joined a childhood and how that affects you and how that affected me. But definitely as like someone who's not a, a, a non-par house, so non , someone who's not Caucasian, white.
I suppose you could say Pakeha is the Maori word. For that as, so as someone who's a non-par of like, kind of, of a minority ethnicity in New Zealand, especially in the South island. I definitely felt like I had to choose, I had to categorize myself into being either this or that and kind of honoring or respecting my, my Chinese heritage or my Kiwi.
Identity. And between the two, I definitely identify a lot more with being Kiwi. However, after so many years of over traveling, I feel like I am an accumulation of all the places I have lived, all the cultures that I have embraced, and I take what I, what I love from each one and I create my, my own identity.
And so I find this. Question. Really difficult to answer when people ask me like, oh, where are you from? Or, you know, where do you identify? as being from, I really struggled to, to answer that. And and yeah, so feeling of not belonging. And another thing which I'm really grateful for actually during my adolescent years was I was a competitive swimmer.
By competitive, I mean like really competitive. I was. At four 30 in the morning, training about four hours a day six days a week, , which is crazy. I was swimming at nationals, competing at nationals, and yeah, I, you know, modestly would say I was pretty good swimmer , and I had a, an amazing coach a great team and it really helped shape my self-discipline with, and I feel like without, The, this kind of athlete training grind you know, mentality.
I wouldn't be where I am today because I am by default. I think I'm a really lazy person. Like I would never choose to wake up at four 30. . I would never choose. To push myself so hard or know how hard I could push myself if it were not for those years as a competitive swimmer. So I'm really grateful for that.
And yeah. And so all my life, since I was five, I was told I was gonna be a doctor and so I enrolled in med school, did health science his first year, went into genetics, microbiology, and then realized I'm not cut out for either. And. To be honest, I'd be a really terrible doctor cuz I couldn't give two shits about memorizing all the different bones, veins, arteries, muscles the ailments of the body.
Like it just didn't excite me the slightest. I really did it because I was told this is my path, this is what I'm. Guaranted b I never thought to question it until my third year of uni, I would say. At which point then I asked myself like, Hey, am Emily, you know, like, what are you interested in? And it was interesting cuz I found myself and I just gave myself the freedom to, to think to dream, to allow myself to just be pulled in a direction.
I found myself really interested in entrepreneurship and , however that involve, I remember looking through the papers and I was like, marketing one, I want marketing this, marketing this. And I was like, oh, this is too much marketing. And I thought at the time marketing was like super sleazy and gross.
And I hated marketing because I hated the idea of like selling things to people. It just felt really gross to me. And also I like, I just didn't have confidence. I hated present. Like any presentations, I would just die. I like, remember, I would throw up before any presentation, I would freeze up. I sometimes still do her.
I, I don't know. Is it this drama? in me when I go up to talk in front of a crowd. And so yeah, I was just like, this is not for me. Like I can't be an entrepreneur. Like I can't market. So, so I opted instead for the safer option of economics and accounting because at least I could get some safety and salary jobs out of university.
I thought, and and yeah, so that's kind of what I did. And around that time I was In a serious relationship, which lasted about a year and a bit. And and I remember applying for an internship. I got an internship, it was I think a two month internship over summer in, in Auckland. And it was in the kind of like corporate auditing and business advisory sector.
And that was really interesting. I learned a lot. I. Had already begun to doubt after that internship, if the corporate life was for me, if I really wanted to be an accountant. It didn't seem like a lot of fun and I was like, I looked at people. . And look, there are people who were say 3, 5, 10 years ahead of me.
And I asked myself like, do they have the life that I want? And truth be told, I, I said to myself, no, not really. I, I don't really want their life, but I didn't know what else I wanted at the time. So, you know, I left that sort of over ended unanswered. And at the end of the, the internship I was getting ready to do my exchange master in Vienna 2016.
So this is kind of like the end of part one where life as I knew it in New Zealand ends and life like what it could be in Europe begins. And so now we begin part two. So we're gonna take a short break here so I can share a little tip with you. If you are starting a business or going freelance, then having an elevated brand and website is going to help you stand out so much so that you can book more clients, attract more customers, and ultimately achieve so much more of the success and the freedom that you.
This podcast episode is proudly sponsored by Aroha Visuals. Yes, I did just sponsor my own podcast, but hear me out. If your dream is to create a life of locational freedom, then having an impressive brand and website is the biggest asset you could invest in. I've helped multiple clients double their income through strategic and efficient design, and I would love to help you.
If you've got no idea where to even begin, then I've got a free website and SEO checklist. To get you started, just head over to arohavisuals.com/resources. That's A R O H A V I S U A L s.com/resources, and just tell me where to send it. Okay, friends, let's get back to the episode. So it's quite interesting how looking back things happened for a reason.
And at that time I was, I'd just come out of a, a serious, my first serious relationship I was. Quite devastated to say the least, like really devastated and and I just needed to get outta the country basically . So I applied for an exchange semester to Vienna. I always wanted to go to Europe. I always wanted to do an exchange and I.
Somehow this was the perfect excuse, the perfect opportunity. So I'm actually really grateful for how everything turned out. And yeah, so I went on exchange in 2016, I think it was February. I met and fell in love with a drum boy, Nico, and we traveled a lot together. That was a wonderful semester, and I just remember.
like pinching myself almost every day that I, you know, would be in a different country. I would be just the sights, the, the feeling, the vibes. Like I just couldn't believe that I was there and I got to live this life and I felt so incredibly lucky and to be. . Oh. Just to feel so loved. And it, it was really one of the, the best chapters.
of my twenties thus far and it definitely concreted the fact for me that I wanted to come back to, to live in Europe and I would do anything to come back and live in Europe as well. Yeah, during that time I also learned German and was speaking at semi what fluently by the end, which was really cool and that, that ties into a story later on.
But after the semester ended, I went back to New Zealand to. You know, kind of continue my studies there. I got an internship at Crow Howorth, which is an accounting firm. I so interned there for some times for, you know, I can't remember how many months it was. And then I somehow got, well, not somehow, I got offered a full-time job as a task consultant, and the grad salary was very handsome.
I said, yes. I actually accepted and then I got home and I felt like a noose had just like tightened around my neck and I just felt so like my, my. It was the end of my twenties was just the end. It was nothing more from life like, this is it. I was so depressed and sad. And then I had a friend of mine, Freya.
Freya, if you're listening, thank you. You, your question changed the course of my life. She looked at me, she's like, oh, I ams. Like, why don't you just do another exchange? Like it was the most simple question ever. Like why don't you just go on another exchange? And I was like, because I can't, I shouldn't, I have a job now.
And all these excuses. And she said, well hey look, just like go talk to the exchange advisors, like maybe there's some scholarships for Scandinavia cuz that's where I wanted to go. And and just try it out. Who knows? And then if you get it, then. You can make your choice. And I was like, oh, I really shouldn't.
But I really wanted to, and I'm so, so, so grateful and so thankful that things just happened the way they did. There was a scholarship, I can't remember if it. what kind of scholarship it was, but I applied for it and I got scholarship and it really helped fund my, my trip to Scandinavia. It was amazing.
And and so I applied for the scholarship, got it handed in my sort of resignation before I'd even started, and they were really upset and rightly so, and disappointed with me. I felt really bad about that. However, I just. Wasn't ready to let go of my youth yet I wasn't ready to, to let go of my dream lifestyle.
Like I just couldn't. And that would be, for me, it was like admitting defeat. And I, and I absolutely refused to. I'd rather Where cafe really grind it out and live cheaply as possible, but get to live feeling like I'm free. Maybe that's not the case for everyone. I totally get it. But for me, that was the feeling that I just couldn't let go of.
And so, so yeah, I was willing to do whatever it took to continue this lifestyle of like, freedom of, of just, ugh. Adventure and on my terms. And and so the next chapter, before I started studying in Scandinavia, I needed to fund myself cuz Stockholm's expensive. So I went to. And JU 2017, and I was an EA for a Spanish family there for three, four months.
And then I went back to Germany. I worked at a cafe. Really thankful for this. Experience, like so thankful because working at the cafe like this is where my German improved so much. I was talking to people all the time and I swear like without this, my German would not be as good as it is. So, so thankful to everybody I met and who helped improve my German during this this phase.
And then finally when I kind of saved enough, I I went up to Sweden. I bought a car, , went up to Sweden for my exchange. And I remember. . I remember thinking like, oh shit, you know, I, I, I can't afford rent in Stockholm because it's so expensive. It was, I think it was like the cheapest you could get was like 500 to about a thousand euros a month.
And I was like, oh, like, no way. I just, I can't afford that out. And so I ended up living, I bought a car for a thousand Euros. I ended up living in my car for, originally, my plan was for two weeks until I realized I, I couldn't. Afford rent. And so I lived in my car for I think three months even lit, like literally living outta my car.
I had like, Mattresses. I would I would, so how I made it work with university was that I would park all the way out at the end, the outskirts of, of Stockholm and then had a monthly metro pass. So I'd just metro into university every single day. Occasionally I would take a shower on like, I think the seventh floor of the university.
And, and yeah, after university I'd do anything I needed to do with wifi and then I'd go back to my car all the way on the outskirts of town and then just not have wifi and just read and journal, do photography, wonder, explore the beautiful Aroha. Lego Stockholm, like there was so much, and even though I lived as.
quite literally a homeless, poor, broke student. I think I saw more of Stockholm than anyone else. Any, any other exchange student, because I was, I was moving my, kind of, cuz freedom camping are allowed to sleep in your car or Freedom camp in, in Scandinavia. And so I was moving about every. Three-ish days to a new part.
And I got to discover new places all the time in the Arche Leggo, and it was just fa just incredible, fascinating and just, ugh. I loved it. And I think the biggest lesson I learned whilst having nothing was appreciating everything like a hot shower was. Pure luxury for me, having a bed, the occasional bed to sleep on when when a friend of mine was, I don't know.
out on a, on a weekend trip, they're like, oh, Emily, you know, do you wanna crash in my bed? And I'm like, yes, please. And just having a bed, a mattress was like luxury. And I just realized, like I've spent most of my life not appreciating the simple luxuries that was all around me. And when I finally, you know, had nothing.
That was when I really learned to appreciate everything. And now I feel like everything in my life is a bonus, like clean water a, a stove to cook on a mattress. Hot showers. Having a washing machine, , like just all the little things like it, it, that is ah, I think, and that is such a beautiful place to be, to, to see life as, as just a bonus.
Everything is a bonus. And and yeah, I mean the, the actual study part, I feel like I wasn't really there to study. I was there to have to explore and have fun. Study power went. Okay. After the exchange, I went back to Corins to work at the cafe for a couple months, and then, and then I decided one of the places I really wanted to visit but never had the f didn't really have the funds to visit last time, like properly was Norway and
And so while I was, you know, at the end of my Stockholm Exchange, I decided I wanted to be a kayaking guide in Norway. I decided that, and people were like, Emily, you don't have a qualification, Emily, you don't have a certification, Emily , do you even know how to kayak? And I was like, yes, and I can learn
And so with that kind of mindset, like I will do whatever it takes. to make this work. I think I emailed like 30, 35 different companies. I don't even know. I lost count and three people got back to me. One of them said they needed. Qualifications or certifications. I was like, that's fine. That was out. And I had two other people reply yes to me.
I picked the one that said yes to me first. There was an ID fjord and and then halfway through I actually switched to the other second company who said yes to me. In, in, so, , I really got to experience kayak guiding with two different companies in a way, in two different fjords, and it was just magical.
Like I think that was the best summer of my life. I learned so much about so many things. Not just kayaking, but how to like lead people, like groups of people, how to speak to a group of 30 odd people when, you know, initially I, I freaked out and at just. , any number more than eight people. I was like freaking out, you know?
And and yeah, what it means to be a good guy, to tell stories, to, to entertain people, to to make people feel safe with you. And . And that as well as all the, the, the safety side, the logistics, the operational side, and, and maybe even to an extent like the business side of running, what it takes to run an outdoor company like that.
and I really got a good glimpse of like whether or not I'd like to do this in the future. Definitely the funnest job ever. Incredible landscapes. I loved all the clients, the guests that are attracted, just adventurous people and I always thought to myself, I'd love to do this however. , it didn't seem sustainable to me in some way.
I like, I loved it so much, but when you run two back to back, say three day tours, or three back to back three hour tours in one day, like it runs you down so much and you feel like, wow, like this isn't very sustainable. And if you only do it for six months of the year, that's not so bad. , but I thought, okay, like I love this.
Maybe we'll come back to this at some point in my life. But I feel like this isn't what I'm supposed to be doing as much as, as sad as it was to admit to myself. And so after Norway, I fell into a bit of a dark period. This was like November, 2018 to March, 2019. I was Moved to the US to Ashland in Wisconsin with, with my mom and my stepdad, and basically questioned my whole life.
I like fell into a weird depression. I felt really lost. I didn't know what I wanted to do except that I wanted to like build something on my terms. I didn't want to look for a job, but I did, but I didn't. And at one point my mom jokingly said to me like, you'd be a really terrible employee because I have my opinions, I have my visions.
And I'm like, oh, you can do this better. You can do this better. And, and I also feel like I'd be a really terrible employee. So, so it's kind of like with that, In mind, I felt really nudged like this is the time to trial starting something. And so I, at the time, I knew some travel bloggers and they were really successful.
They're from Austrias or Mataga Kati and . So thank you so much for inspiring Freedom Wonders. So I had the inspiration to start Freedom Wonders, which was a travel photography blog. And this is, this is kind of like Freedom Wanderers was the version one of Free Wild Souls, and I didn't know what I was doing, so I just started somewhere you, you know, just had to start somewhere.
And I gave myself the, the goal of just releasing or publishing one blog article every single week. And I hid that actually I'm really proud of myself, . But it was a lot of work. For very, very little return. And but I really enjoyed it up until, up until I didn't. But we'll get to that later. Yeah, so I started it when I was in Ashland during that winter phase, and in February of 2019, my mom and I took a three week trip to Thailand where I met a French web designer developer at a hostel.
And. I was fascinated. I was like, so you are a freelancer? And he's like, yes. And I'm like, so you work anywhere in the world, like here in Thailand and, and you, and you can survive. Like you can make it work. And and he was like, yes. And I was so fascinated by his lifestyle, cuz I think he was one of the, He was possibly even the first person I'd met who did something relatively like creative and was freelancing and was like kind of work and traveling at the same time.
And I just thought, wow. And he really. Planted that seed of, of like this freelance life could be possible for me. This life of locational freedom and financial freedom as well. I wouldn't have to be fixed to one place slaving away in some little cubicle, you know, and, and from that it just, that belief that it's possible that someone else did it and I could do it too.
Just changed everything and I kept that at the back of my mind as I went back to to Europe for the summer. My brother did an internship in Florence and so I kind of lived with him between Florence and Parato for a couple of months. Traveled around Europe. June or July, 2019, I went back to New Zealand rather.
No, I wouldn't say unhappy, but rather the, just, there was some hesitation to go back to New Zealand, but I had one degree that I just, one paper yet that I had to finish and then I would get my second degree. So I have like a degree, bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Commerce and yeah. I thought, okay, fine.
We'll just go back and finish it. And at the time, my job that was sort of helping me was working at the cafe, but also I was a freelance translator for an Austrian travel blog zaga. The people I mentioned just before. And so I was translating their articles from German to English and I think I was making anywhere between like 400, 800 Euro a month, depending on how many articles I was translating.
So that was fantastic and really helpful. And at the same time I kept working on Freedom Wanderers and and yeah, so that chapter in New Zealand, I finished my degree. November, 2019. Moved to Melbourne? Yes, Melbourne, Australia in November until February, 2020. And I worked at a cafe, basically Stanley Cafe.
Lovely place. Yeah, I met some cool people there that are still friends now. And yeah, it was, that was a great little interlude chapter where I kind of just got to have some downtime to think about what I wanted to do for the next phase of my life. And then in March, 2020, as we all know, the, the the pandemic kind of begun, but luckily just before kind of start of March, I'd booked my tickets and I was moving to Spain,
I was moving to Sevi to be with my boyfriend Nico, and we'd been sort of on and off for about, for a few years now actually. With a long distance. It was kind of hard to. Well, yeah, it's just hard to keep a relationship going when I'm always moving. And we were on and off for some time, but but this time I wasn't really committed.
I wanted to, to move to Spain with him. And then two days later, literally two days later, the lockdown started and shit hit the fan. That's the whole world. And so. , it was a perfect excuse. The perfect environment, well not environment, but like the perfect sort of excuse to spend this all this extra time investing in myself in courses and starting my business.
And I hustled really, really hard for like a year and a half. I basically between then and now-ish, I lived between severe and escaped to Germany for the summers. , my business really took off in 2021. However, it, towards the end I kind of got burnt out a little bit. And so yeah, around October, 2021, I left Germany.
So I separated from my partner of almost six years, and and went to Sevi. And that was a really. kind of transformational time, I suppose you could say. I just, I felt like the pandemic had changed a lot of people in different ways, and for me, I felt like a really different person and I didn't know who I was becoming.
I felt a little bit lost and. Kind of just had this urge to, to figure things out and be on my own and just do life solo for a little while. And so, so yeah, I went back to severe November, 2021 till February this year, 2022. The long, long-term plan was actually to move to Florence initially and study interior design, but at some point it.
and this other idea came into my head like, Hey Portugal, like we should go to Portugal. And so yeah, that just felt so like a bodi, like a, this, this instinctual gut feeling. Yes. For me. And so I kind of moved to Portugal on a whim and I might record a future episode on like why I moved there and like, what.
Like why I decided to stay there and get my visa and what that process whole process was like. But basically I loved it so much. I love the people here. I love the culture. I love like everything that they have here. I ended up staying applying for a residency permit and currently planning some creative adventure retreats in Portugal for the near future.
And yeah, so I think I'll stay here a long while. I don't have a massive desire to move anytime soon. There is a part of me that is itching to visit South America, Argentina, Patagonia, Costa Rica, Peru and like so many countries down there, . So who knows? But that, that is, well, I think we're all caught up now.
Basically like, long story short summarizing this long episode, I feel like. . Honestly, I feel like your twenties are meant to just be a fucking shit show of a mess. Sometimes you are allowed to fall and you do fall. You fall, you fail, you stand up, you lut and you move on the, and like. It's only when you look back that the dots, you know, join up and they make sense and you're like, oh, I'm so glad I did that.
I'm so glad I failed. I'm so glad I learned. I'm so glad that relationship didn't work out, for example. And, and that in all of that, I think we have such an urge to have things stay the same. You know, I hope my relationship will always be like this, or I hope my job will always be like this, or I hope I'll always feel this way about X, Y, Z.
However, like. One of the best. It's best you say, beliefs that I had to come to terms of, that I had to come to terms with is that change is the only constant and it's the people who adapt best to change are the ones who thrive. Because if you don't change and you don't adapt change then happens to you and you feel like a victim of change instead of instead of going with it and, and really capitalizing on it.
And and thriving from it, you know, so, so yeah. I hope you enjoyed this episode, . I feel like people are always confused about my story because I removed around so much and as you can see, it's a little bit complicated. Doesn't exactly fit into a, a, a five minute conversation. , I usually just speed it up and just, You know, condense things down to like chapters.
But I do hope that it helps to paint a picture of this glorious messiness that has been my twenties and it's been full of ups and downs. It's been so hard and challenging. But also so rewarding and just so much joy from, from just living life and that I am where I am today. Cause I dared to experiment cause I dared to defy social norms and create a life that felt.
Free and aligned for me. So yeah, I'd love to hear if you resonated with any part of my story and I look forward to recording more episodes for you in the future and I'd love to hear of course, what likes from you, what you'd like to hear more of what you are. About. And yeah, let's keep the conversation going.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. I'm so grateful for your time and I would love to hear what you found most insightful, all resonated with the most from today's conversation. You can send me a personal DM over on an. Instagram at Emily Peilan. That's E M I L Y P E I L A N. And please also share this episode with any family or friends looking to create this freedom lifestyle.
And lastly, if you're craving a wild creative adventure with a bunch of rad, soulful humans, you can find out more on our retreats page here at freewildsouls.com/retreats. That's all for today, my friends.
