It’s June 2003 and I’m at the post office, about to send an envelope to South Korea.

The postage is £4.06. Inside is my degree certificate.

I am on the verge of diverting my life from being a bit crap to being possibly not crap, inspired by a friend and a Ricky Gervais quote.

The state of my life was my own fault. I’d been a goody-goody child: never naughty;

always trying to answer questions; always polite (sometimes weirdly so).

But amid some family chaos and teenage bullying, I decided to be crap: crap in lessons, crap in exams.

I pretended it was funny. Only teachers noticed. Nobody else cared.

Luckily I got into a university that accepted crap grades. I did a computing and business degree. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I met people from private school, but still didn’t realise life was a competition, that there were people around the country who were trying to be good rather than crap. I thought I was clever enough for it not to matter.

At the end of my first year a friend from Hampshire suggested we go to Australia. I remember being surprised. Can people really do that? In the summer I got a day job and a night job. I saved up. A few of us spent a month in Australia among new pubs, tanned Brits and imported Boddingtons. Wow, I thought. During a placement year I saved again and went to South Africa with a different friend. He got me into Talib Kweli’s music and rugby. I’d always said rugby was shit. I’d never watched it.

In my final year I wrote my dissertation – “Managing a network-wide desktop upgrade: The Problems encountered by GlaxoSmithKline and how to remedy them” – and moved back to my mum’s house in Newcastle. A letter told me I’d got a 2:2. I don’t regret the fun and the drinking, but I regret the consequences. My call centre awaited.

I worked for a company that provided telephone support to BT customers with computer problems. There were hardly any calls. On late shifts I’d read books. I remember watching the invasion of Iraq on my game console between taking calls from people whose printers weren’t working. I’d spent years expanding my world and now it was contracting.

You know those people who are vibrant regardless of their situation? That’s not me. I’m only as interesting as the last trip I went on; only as confident as the number on the weighing scales. So having to tell people I worked in a call centre … Maybe you’re better than me.

My friend saved me: a Manc called Jon Sealey. We met at university. We were in Australia together. I think he’d also been surprised at the thought we could go to Australia. After graduating he got an office job. He hated it. So one lunchtime he walked to a travel shop and bought a ticket to Hong Kong. Then he went back to the office and printed out his notice. He went to Asia and ended up teaching in Daegu, South Korea.

My second saviour was Ricky Gervais. We used to quote The Office at work. All these characters not living the life they want to lead. Will Tim quit? Will Dawn? It was inspiring. I had a Ricky Gervais quote on my computer screen. I can’t find it now, but it was something about not spending your whole life doing a job you hate then retiring with a pat on the back. That quote made my heart hurt. What was I doing?

So I emailed the language school where Jon was teaching, just a few classrooms above some shops, and they said I could teach there. I put my degree certificate in a brown envelope and took it to a post office in Newcastle. My dad had recently had a stroke and that was part of it: fuck it, you get one life. The school sent me a plane ticket. I left on 12 June 2003.

In Daegu, Mr Lee picked me up at the airport and took me to the school. I met up with Jon. We went straight out and drank soju and ate live octopus – they said to swallow it quickly or it’ll suck on to your throat. We saw American soldiers who left the bars at curfew. We became friends with Koreans who headbanged to Rage Against the Machine then line-danced to Korean pop. They didn’t care about the UK. They’d never heard of Newcastle.

I was free from the prescriptive life of back home: save for a mortgage, get a mortgage, pay off your mortgage, die. I’m facing the consequences of that now, but I don’t regret it. I enjoyed writing emails to my sister. She said they made her laugh. I read autobiographies by Andrew Neil, Toby Young and Martin Amis. I wanted to be a writer. Why hadn’t I tried? So I tried.

These days I have to stop myself boring on at people in their 20s. When they mutter about hating their job but sticking with it for the money, I think of the friends I’ve seen drift into middle age without figuring out what they want to do with their lives. Dreams become regrets. But when you’re young, you can do it: just quit, get on a plane and get out of your life. You figure it out once you’ve gone.