9 years since my last blog post. Let’s call it a decade. Where do I even begin. It’s basically been crisis to crisis for the last 9 years. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy most of it. In fact, one of them was the best years of my life, but it hasn’t been smooth sailing. I’ve spent the last 10 years trying to find myself to finally realise I was never really lost.
It started as a marriage separation, which lead to a new relationship, which ended in tears and me committing to being single for a period of time, which lead to a mid-life crisis (or sorts), travelling out of a suitcase as a digital nomad, dating women half my age, with illusions of becoming an author.
Meanwhile my businesses thrived on neglect. I had built a good team and good systems and could get away with a few hours work from which ever hotel room I was in, in whatever city ranging from Phuket to Warsaw. All the while larping as a Henry Miller esq romantic traveller who would eventually publish his drafts.
Then tragedy struck. My 13 year old son got really sick and never recovered. I spent the first year with him in the hospital and then he went into care at his mums. I then continued on my hedonistic ways but it had lost its zing, and I was getting old. I married a beautiful Indonesian girl right around Covid and knuckled down to business. I had a lot to catch up on.
My son passed just before his 18th birthday and I was pretty well debilitated by the grief. Maybe if I had to work I could have, but if I could take time off to pretend I was a teenager again, then I could take time off to grieve my son. I spent a lot of time walking along the beach listening to sad songs. The grief passed enough for me to be motivated to work again and then I had the bright idea of moving to Indonesia with my new wife and our new baby boy.
On paper it made sense, earn AUD and spend IDR, but I failed to take into consideration yet another upheaval of moving countries – with a 6 month old no less. It was hell moving and not much better settling in, but we are almost there and live in a beautiful villa in Lombok.
So we have divorce, marriage, life, death, and moving country. The only one I missed was bankruptcy. Almost did that too, somewhere along the way I started a new business that failed and only got out by the skin of my teeth, but that story can wait for another time.
I now sit here with enough to retire (at least in Asia), a new young family, and I ask myself what am I going to do? What do I do when I don’t really need to work? I have always liked Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia. My understanding of it is to be and do that which I am best at and which I enjoy. I have been an ecommerce entrepreneur for over twenty years. I started my first online store in 2003.
It’s not that I think I am that good it, it’s just the thing I am best at, and the most experienced in, and for all practical purposes a success. I am nickj the eCommerce entrepreneur. That’s not hyperbole, that’s literal. That’s where all my income has come from. I shed what I thought was my false identity to find myself and while out in the wilderness I have become that which I always was. In losing myself I found myself.
Enough looking at my navel. I haven’t quite given up on the writing, but I have (almost) given up on the fame aspect. It’s my narcissist that wants fame, and that is a part of me that, while it can achieve some things, doesn’t bring long-term happiness. I will write my memoirs, but that will be my legacy to family and friends – that may never read them. There is a million words of self-indulgent dribble there in draft – it will be fun to publish. But I am by definition a successful eCommerce entrepreneur. I have an eCommerce agency in Wooassist and online business IOTA Designer Planters. What’s more I enjoy it. I can’t say it doesn’t feel like work, but it does often feel like play. So I will write my journey about it here.
Nickj Ecommerce Entrepreneur 