Feeling like there was nothing left for him in New Zealand, Simon Ward moved to Sydney. But it wasn't exactly the grand odyssey he was expecting.
Listen to the story as it was told at The Watercooler storytelling night or read on.
Back in 2011, I was frustrated.
I'd become known for work I wasn't particularly proud of, and felt limited by that, and stifled, and wanted to move on to more interesting work - to play roles that last longer than 30 seconds.
That wasn't happening. Those opportunities seemed scarce, or out of reach.
I needed a change. I'd never done an OE, but had been to America. I'd been to New York, fallen in love with New York, decided I wanted to live in New York.
I'd even just put a girl I was seeing on a plane to New York, and she was over there saying "I'll see you soon in New York!"
I didn't have the means or the visa, so started putting my ducks in a row, got my shit in a pile, and moved to...
Sydney. In Australia.
Well, I didn't have the visa for America, right? I was frustrated here, sick of being here and needed to make a change. I thought “Okay, I'll go to Australia”.
Lots of Kiwis make the move over there, the greener pastures thing. I'll get over there, make Australian dollars (it was stronger back then) and the idea was, you know, at some point surely I'm going to win the Green Card lottery, obviously, because everybody does eventually, right? When I do, I'll have been making Australian dollars, I can go over, and...
That didn't happen.
I very quickly learned once I got to Sydney that (a) it pays to plan ahead, and you know, maybe have a job to go to, things like that. Practical issues.
But also (b) that I was just trading one set of frustrations for another.
I very quickly started to feel like I was banging my head against a brick wall over there, and that I wasn't progressing, the same way that I wasn't progressing back here.
Before I left New Zealand, I started a blog. Which is a terrible idea.
Before I left New Zealand, I started a blog. Which is a terrible idea. During this time in Australia I came to better sense and deleted the blog ... and started a journal instead.
Which is a better idea, because with a journal nobody ever reads my innermost frustrations spewed out for all to peruse and go "I don't give a shit".
But just to paint a little picture, and give a sense of my state of mind at the time, I brought that fucking book with me. So here are just a few samples of where my head was at...
"11 May 2013 - There's a freedom in obscurity, but most of the time it feels like some kind of thick fog, or the un-swimmable distance to shore ...
...so you feel unsettled? BE unsettled. Never ever ever stay still. Never ever ever be satisfied. Hold yourself to a higher standard. Write like a genius. Act with the inner peace that comes from deep self confidence... (clearly I was really coming apart at the seams by this stage) ...live the creative life you've trained for...and get a fucking job. You need money."
"16 May 2013" (a mere five days later) "Is it still called hubris when you're not successful?"
"21st July 2013" - I'd had a decent stab at it over there for a little while - "The more I think about it the more I think the best thing for my acting career would be to focus on it less."
Yup.
I did start to think of my time over there as my 40 days in the desert, because of course I compare myself to Jesus.
"Maybe my last two years were my days in the wilderness. Maybe I'm not just admitting defeat but accepting this period as one punishing round in a much longer fight. I definitely feel more - dot dot dot - galvanised."
The desperate positivity of someone who really has nothing, you know? And this is around the time I started seeing sense, because I closed out this particular entry with "...all I need is to go back and continue tending the seeds I've sown in these two years of shit." So... finding the positive in the negative...
I did end up coming back, and I had really tried while I was over there. Friends over there had gone over and were succeeding, doing really well, and in a way that was part of the problem. Not so much a case of jealousy - I'm always truly happy for my friend’s successes - but I was like... it's fucking Australia, you know? It shouldn't be this hard.
I was like... it's fucking Australia, you know? It shouldn't be this hard.
Going to Sydney is not the beginning of some big odyssey, it's over the ditch. It's really so close to home.
And so, it was equally confusing and frustrating to be over there and not succeed. It was like "... this is just where you go to move forward, right?" But it just didn't happen that way.
The saving grace was that I was writing, and had a lot of time on my hands. I was doing a lot of casual work for loathsome people, but in the downtime I was writing a lot. Eventually I came back to do a show. I actually came back for my brother's wedding and felt instantly so connected here in a way that I wasn't over there. In a way that I didn't feel when I first left. So I kinda went "Okay, right, well... there is something for me here."
Took me a while to see it. Took me that space and that isolation to see it, but I kinda went, "okay well I'm going back, I'll give it another few months, I've gotta come back because I'm doing this play, but I'll play the last of the cards in my hand, see what happens."
Did that, nothing happened. That's fine. By that stage I'd kind of accepted it. Came back with half a draft of my play Thumper, which I ended up doing a few months later.
People would ask me when I came back "oh are you back for good?" and I would honestly say "well, I don't know. I'm back indefinitely, I guess..." but yeah, I mean, it's almost a year and a half later. I've been fairly busy since coming back.
I don't know that there's an ending to this story, because I think one of the things I learnt in going through this whole process was that it is just going to be an ongoing process. So I suppose if I have to sum it up, the point of the story and what that time meant to me, is this: I had to go away so I could come back again.
This story was originally told at The Watercooler, a monthly storytelling night held at The Basement Theatre. If you have a story to tell email thewatercoolernz@gmail.com or hit them up on Twitter or Facebook.
Illustration: Josh Drummond
This content is brought to you with funding support from New Zealand On Air.