Member-only story
An Unsent Message to My Dad
The case for emotional intelligence
Melbourne, Australia May 2015
My dream of immigrating permanently to Australia was quickly turning into a living nightmare. I was stranded in Melbourne in the winter. The perpetual cloud cover accentuated an impossibly dark situation.
I was running out of money in a foreign country with no return plane ticket home. I was a 24-year-old “child” who had greatly miscalculated the required finances to make this move.
My current 34-year-old self isn’t quite “grown-up” either. My risk profile hasn’t changed much in 10 years.
In 2015, my parents were sending me just enough money to eat pasta twice a day plus extend my weekly hostel stay. With the hostel’s free breakfast, this was perfect.
After a day of desperately cold emailing architecture firms all over Australia, my only solace was a 24-hour McDonald’s, which had a “Maccas” sign outside. With whatever money I had leftover, I would get two $0.50 soft-serve cones, and check my inbox for responses.
Nothing.
One cold winter night at 11 PM, I got 3 soft serve cones. A guy at an adjacent table said, “You got 3 ice cream cones? Two isn’t enough? You’re greedy!”
