Hello again,

It’s hard to believe that two months have already passed since I posted the introduction to the Enchovy Club. Today, I want to share what has been happening since then.

One of our content creators recently expressed, “I have no idea what content to create because I don’t know this community is about.”

Fair point. I’m not entirely sure myself, and I worry about defining things too early, much like deciding a baby’s fate at a doljabi ceremony. However, since it’s the weekend and I have some quiet time, I thought I would jot down the thoughts swirling in my head.

If you read this and think “Wow, this person has no plan, I can’t just sit back and watch,” please jump in.

If the idea of “let’s build a community together” feels too heavy a proposal, then how about: let’s gather writings about the lives we want to live and the work we want to do.

Honestly, our “target” is fluid. Flow like water!

At first, I wanted to gather people who are into “non-mainstream lifestyles” — like digital nomadism, leaving Seoul, or surfing.

Surfing, in particular, is a hilariously impractical lifestyle. Patagonia’s HR philosophy “Let My People Go Surfing” really means: “Oh wow, great waves in Yangyang tomorrow morning? Let's take the day off and go!” #NSFW

But most people’s response was, “Cool. Let me know when the community is done building. And I’ll visit.” Nobody rolled up their sleeves and said, “Alright, let’s build this together!”

So then I turned to foreign digital nomads in Korea. Here, I didn’t need to persuade anyone with “Hey, wouldn’t this be fun? Want to join?” They were already living it. Plus, The nomad community is well-networked, making it feel like all I had to do was transplant that community into Korea. I even changed our Discord and Notion pages to English.

But then I realized. What I really want is to ripple change in Korean society. Would a community of non-Koreans be interested in that? And after all, nomading isn’t about “staying and making change.”

Right now, the folks in Enchovy Club Season 1 are people I met through nonce, that wonderfully weird community. My original dream was to “build something like nonce in Yangyang.” So maybe it’s time I start recruiting people who’ve never heard of nonce (which is hard to explain—you just got to live it). My hope is that if I just keep sharing my ideas, sooner or later I’ll bump into the right people.

We created a “metaverse clubroom” on Discord.

In college, clubs can be classified into: those with a dedicated room and those without. Discord feels like the digital equivalent of that room — a scrappy little space with bad furniture and endless possibilities.

When I first joined Discord, my reaction was, “Whoa, all this is possible?”  There was an 'Open Sessemi' feature with an emoji reaction. I decided to try it out: “Click the surfboard emoji to unlock other channels.” However, some people found it a bit odd and just never clicked anything. I completely understand.

I’ve learned that communities grow through three key elements:  Role, Rule, Ritual. Another phrase stuck with me: “Holding space” — being present for someone without judgment. I interpreted it loosely as: “At this time, in this place, I’ll be there for you.”

So here’s the ritual we’re trying:

• From May to August (prime Yangyang weather), we’ll meet in Yangyang on the last Tuesday–Wednesday of the month.

• For the other seasons, we’ll meet in the metaverse (Discord) on the last Wednesday at 8 PM.

At the end of May, we had our first “remote work week” in Yangyang. We worked at a coworking space in Gangneung called Wave Salon, and sometimes just from camping chairs at a surf shop. With no waves to surf, we decided to go clamming instead.

In the crypto community, POAPs (Proof of Attendance Protocol) are NFTs that certify your attendance at an event. Since Enchovy Club is “metaverse-first,” we wanted to make our offline meetups special. So we created an IRL POAP for our first gathering.

That evening, we enjoyed pizza at a local brewery with a mix of people: crypto folks (like me), monk, shipping people, real estate people, architecture people, surfing people, and Yangyang locals. Everyone downloaded MetaMask and claimed their first POAP together. I don’t remember much of the conversation, but I do know I’d love to grab beers with them again.

When there are no waves, you can still float.

Three of us from Enchovy Club Season 1 literally floated in the sea together while recording a podcast. To avoid drifting apart, we clung to each other’s legs while we talked.

We recorded another episode on the drive back to Seoul. The EV had to stop for charging, and then a sudden downpour trapped us inside the car. So we kept recording there with the raindrops bgm.

If you’re curious about our dramatized experiences of “the future of work” (adrift at sea, trapped in a storm), check us out on Podbbang or Apple Podcasts. The first two episodes are raw, unedited pilots, but be sure to set your notifications—by episode 4, it might start to sound like a real show.

I’ve come to realize that finding people to build Enchovy Club with is going to be a long journey. I’m just a stardust ..but the universeis full of stardust! Surely there are others out there who share this: “This life, let’s do it all. Don't wait for the next life”

I want to regularly collect and share content—whether it's podcasts or blog posts. Maybe if I keep publishing for three years, a few people will show up and say, "Okay, I'm in."

I’m torn between publishing in English for a wider reach (even if it means losing some nuance) or sticking to Korean, which may result in no readers at all. In the world of crypto, what I’m saying isn't anything new, so gathering people would be easier there. Yet it wouldn’t feel like anything has changed.

Leadership videos often emphasize that the true spark of a movement doesn’t come from the leader, but from the First Follower. If I keep "dancing" like a fool, maybe someone will join in.

If you’ve ever thought, "I’ve been saving this for my next life, but maybe I can try it in this one," I would love hear more.

(P.S. We did start an Instagram account, but people begged me to stop posting because they found my posts too cringe. So it's on pause for now.)

I love nonce because i found courage — courage to live the way I think, not think the way I live in the community. I want more nonce-like communities in the world.

But there are the ones who don't even need nonce's help to lead a couragous life. One such individual is the owner of my favorite surf shop. He used to have a day job and often took half-days off to drive three hours to surf the evening swell(note: three hours drive is super long for Koreans). Now he’s quit his job to surf full time. In Korea, when people think of “surfing,” they think Bali. But Japan, just across a strait has amazing waves too — and almost no Korean surf shops. He’s decided to pioneer there.

Maybe that’s my next job: staff at a Japanese surf shop!

Another is a friend whose path has shifted from engineering to music, classical to jazz, and then to teaching — only to realize she probably won’t become a teacher after all. When I quit my job after just three months, I texted her, and her response changed from “If you’re an adult, do your exploration on the paycheck” to simply: “You won’t starve so do what you want.”

These are the kinds of people I’m looking for.

So, are you ready to explore everything this life has to offer together?

✨ Anchovy Club, Season 1. Still forming, still searching.