It may be a midlife crisis, or simply the vivid experience of my chaotic life, but it feels like time rushes on while I stand still.
I am a business owner, well co-owner actually. My wife and I operate an English language school in the city of Ulsan South Korea, and have been doing so for the past 6 years. While the first 3 years were a challenge, it seems like the last 3 years, well let's just say it feels like a miracle that we are still in operations.
Three years after opening our school in a relatively upscale, education focused, neighborhood, we moved into a much larger building which meant that we could increase our student numbers and imement our kindergarten program, which untill now was on paper only. It also meant that our expences would sky rocket as the new facilities were much more economically taxing. A month into opening at the new location COVID hit and we, with hundreds of other small businesses, were forced to shut down for two whole months. Two income less months which still required us to continue to cover all of our expences. Somehow we managed to survive, through my wives efforts and the help of bank loans.
A few months after our post COVID reopening, we started a legal battle with our franchisee of one year. By now the reader may presume that a franchise would bring enough to provide well beyond one's needs. Not in this case however. Our school was paying bills, and we had enough to live a middle class life, and the income from our franchisee was barely enough to cover the expences we incurred over the past year from opening the new location and our good old friend COVID. These legal proceedings are still ongoing, and we finally can see the glimmer of an end in sight, over two years later.
This of course could be it if it wasn't for the passing of our 8 year old dog, which came on the heals of another court case involving one of our teachers dragging a student out of his classroom by his ankles, which lead to us now facing a case of child abuse. If this was a case anywhere in Canada or the US the teacher would be solely responsible for their actions. Since,however, we as an employer, provide all native teachers with work visas, a large part of the responsibility falls on us, the employer.
Through all of this, another prospect of a new franchisee came around and we were on the verge of signing a contract with new investors when we were informed by the court that if found guilty, my wife, the school director, could fa e a 5 year suspention from operating an educational institution and we may be ordered to close our school for two months as part of the punishment. We are also still waiting to find out what may happen to the teacher involved.
In all of this, I passed on the opportunity of accepting a position back home in Canada, which would allow me to move back home with my children so they could attend schools in Canada. That was a plan my wife and had been discussing for over a year, but clearly, the timing could not have been any worse.
I spend anywhere from 8 to 16 hours a day teaching classes at our school. In addition, I try to do my best to take care of my children and keep the house in order, simy because with all what is going on with our business, my wife is on the brink of committing suicide,
Then the additional activities of trying to maintain two youtube channels, which are a last priority and more a distraction from the chaos I feel we have been living over the past 3 years.
I wish I had more time to spend on this platform as well as many other things, but life has a tendency to throw curve balls our way and we simply need to learn to adapt just to keep up with the barage of the stitched leather.
