Two month countdown until I go back home, pt. 1

Hello from Seoul! It's been close to six months since I left home to come to Asia. I recently booked my tickets back to the US and it's getting real that this chapter will be over before I know it. When I first embarked on this mini retirement, the only real goal I set for myself was trying to figure out how to live better. I didn't even define what better meant, but just wanted to feel more whole and well on a daily basis.

Now, with a defined end date in mind (at least on all the travel), the urgency of articulating what I've learned and what I will be doing next is top of mind. In all honesty, there are many times lately when I've felt quite anxious and stressed about returning back home. The main source of anxiety is around what I will be doing next. There is both a lot of internal pressure (as well as external pressure) to show myself and everyone else around me that I've made "good use" of this time away from work. This is internalized capitalism trying to force itself into every moment of our lives, but it is nonetheless inevitable if you engage with other people and society at large. It is also absolutely normal for people to be curious about what I have been up to during this time, especially in the job interview process, as I have been asked. However, it is kind of weird to share some of the personal stuff I've been working on and also new skills I'm building. I don't really want to share with an interviewer that I've been speaking to for 30 seconds that I've spent that last nine months recovering from burnout, exploring my cultural heritage, processing emotions and past events, trading options, learning about real estate, working on losing weight, etc. Not only are these thing completely irrelevant to the job in question, but they're all personal to some degree and for whatever reason, I don't really feel like sharing. But, at the same time, people don't seem satisfied with the answer of I've been traveling and sightseeing, perhaps because they can't believe that people would actually do that full time for more than a month.

Thinking about the future and what will come next, I have a preferred outcome in mind (keeping this private!) but in the case that things do not go as I hope, I would likely need to find a new job. This was sort of the plan all along and I knew that at some point I would have to be adult and go back to reality, a.k.a. finding a "real" job. Now that the time to consider next steps has arrived, it is 100x harder than I could have really imagined. I did recently start the job search process, but am feeling a lot of resistance. My heart is not in it.

Foremost, the idea of returning to any sort of 9-5 job where my life is controlled by my employer is extremely unappealing. I have a lot of anxiety about going from absolute freedom and a really happy and enjoyable mini retirement to anything that resembles my former life. Second, I am really questioning the choice of whether or not to return to the types of jobs I've been at previously. These were all high visibility (working with C-suite execs, often times decades older than me), high stress, and also high bullshit roles. I was often the only woman, only POC, and/or the youngest person on my team and that was additional stress that made it harder to navigate the day-to-day politics and office dynamics. At the same time it's hard not to look at these roles since these are the ones I'm most qualified for and have spent the majority of my career focused on (likely why I've been so unhappy with my work life). If I were to pursue a different role, I'd have to be willing to take a major pay cut. Third, the job market for my industry is currently a not-so-great-one. I've been hearing and reading about this broadly, but am also noticing that many of the types of companies I would consider applying to are not hiring at my level / for my function or are hiring but paying salaries that are 25-30% lower than what I was seeing a year ago.

If the primary motivation to go back to work is to make a steady salary and receive benefits like healthcare and retirement investment options, then it does feel like I would need to receive a good enough compensation package that makes going back worth it. From a cash reserve perspective, I could probably go through the rest of the year without returning to work, which would further the argument to wait until I find something really awesome that I'm excited about. On the flip side, I've been hearing from highly informed recruiters in this field that the down market is likely to stay a while...could be six months or even a year before we see improved conditions.

I am aware that there are significant opportunity costs to delaying return to work, namely making money so that I can fund my next set of short/medium term goals, which is largely around building passive income streams in the form of real estate and options. I would like to save $100K in first two years that I return back to work that would go towards a house-hack downpayment (the downpayment I previously was saving has gone towards funding this sabbatical) and doubling my options fund (goal would be to get to $3K in profits per month). An alternative option would be to find a lower paying / lower stress job, but then I feel like this defeats the major value a 9-5 job offers.

I am also working on some other potential backup sources of income / side hustle sources. I am currently taking a real estate pre-licensure course to become a licensed real estate salesperson and am planning to become a public notary (likely closer to when I return to the US). I kind of decided to take the real estate course on a whim, but decided since I'm pushing back when I will be able to buy my own property, I want to make sure I am learning and staying up-to-date with the market. I also just really like learning and taking classes, so this largely is a good use of time. I am also (slowly) learning to code, because I think with Chat GPT and all of these new AI-driven tools, there's a good chance that this tool will be useful in some form going forward.

I haven't seriously considered the possibility of making money via these backup sources, but maybe there is some potential. I come from a family that highly values stability and employment by a company. Anything else is not considered a "real job." While I don't agree with that sentiment, to make my previous base salary alone I would seriously have to hustle., e.g, selling $700K+ worth of properties and making $2K+ in options profits every month. Even if I were to pursue these as my full-time sources of income, it's also unlikely that I would be reaching this level anytime soon.

I will continue to focus on what I can control, which is continuing to apply to jobs in the hopes that I will land something decent sooner than later, as well as working on the projects that I'm hoping will pan out in time. As I mentioned earlier, while I do have a very clear preference for how I would like all of this to turn out, since the outcome isn't fully in my control, I am trying to remember not to place the value of this experience all on the outcome. Even if my deepest desires don't play out the way I want by the arbitrary deadline that I've set for myself, I still do deeply believe that this mini retirement has been a worthwhile and meaningful experience. I need to keep this in mind as the next few months play out.

Stay tuned for part 2, where I'll try to articulate the major learnings I've come to discover thus far.