The end of an era
I looked back through the photos on my phone and found this picture I took the day I got laid off. My dad and I went for a gorgeous hike. What an incredible ride it has been over then last three-and-a-half years.
As is typical to do at the end of the year, I’ve been taking some to reflect on not only on 2025, but the last few years. When I was laid off in the summer of 2022, I hit the reset button on my life—hard. I blew up every norm and system that I had in place and it finally feels like this chapter of rebuilding and transition is perhaps coming to a close.
One thing that I have been grappling with is that I have not hit a lot of the big goals that I set for myself over the last few years. This is purely on an outcomes basis where I said I wanted to achieve certain milestones like buying a house and have not. As a result, I have been feeling a wave of emotions, including shame, guilt, anxiety, and this overwhelming feeling of mediocrity and the discomfort of staying the same. This is not anything new; I have had this constant feeling that I am not living up to my full potential since I graduated college. That feeling has stayed with me across various jobs, milestones, environments, and chapters of the last decade. I am now a full ten years out since college graduation and my life looks nothing like I ever thought it would.
This notion hit me particularly hard during my latest trip to Korea this fall. Who was I to be on my fifth trip to Korea in the last three years and strolling through a museum at 2pm on a weekday? I felt like I was “enjoying” life a little too much, taking things way too easy and essentially doing the bare minimum to get by. On one hand, there is a limit to how much one can eat, shop, and sight see. On the other hand, this perspective misses the depth of the internal work I have been doing over the past few years. This work wasn’t necessarily visible or goal-oriented, but introspective and personal. What shifted this trip is that I realized my system didn’t need more rest — this was a sign that the recovery phase I’ve been is ready to end.
It’s important to acknowledge that this time was not a waste. This has been a major transitional chapter of rebuilding my entire life and operating system from scratch. My sabbatical travels were truly a once-in-a-lifetime adventure and I recovered from burnout, improved my mental and physical health, and learned how to be happy again. This was the foundational groundwork needed to build a new life, which I have done. Letting go of an old identity, recalibrating my nervous system, and getting honest about what I want is its own kind of hard work. One of the toughest parts is that this process doesn’t feel productive or glamorous because the work is all internal. Through this process, there are a lot of confusion and exploration, which by default, results in failing at many of the things that you try. The restlessness, low motivation, and lack of direction were all a part of the process of figuring out the new version of myself I want to be and am becoming.
As I sifted through the emotions as I reflect on the past few years, it dawned upon me that I have been subconsciously treating the last three years as a recovery and restructuring phase rather than a growth phase, even though my conscious self wanted this to be a growth phase. This is why there’s been such a disconnect between these big goals I set for myself and the lack of results. These goals were inherently in conflict with the lifestyle I was living and the re-calibration my subconscious prioritized . Especially given all the travel, where half of the last three years has been abroad, living out of a suitcase, it makes sense that I wasn’t able to achieve these goals. Losing the last ten pounds, purchasing a home, meeting my future husband require structure and stable energy, location, and rhythm. I haven’t prioritized these things and deep down, I wasn’t really ready for them.
I kept questioning why this most recent trip to Korea felt so restless and meaningless. I can now see that it’s because my energy has shifted and I’m no longer needing time and space to heal and rest. I am, in fact, healed and well-rested. I am ready to put in the work to now turn the internal shifts into external results.
After 3.5 years, I finally feel motivated to lock in and actually revisit these goals with real intention. With a better understanding of who I am, what I want to focus on, I’m committing to creating the structure and stability needed to accomplish these big goals — not to make progress for progress’ sake, but because I want to prove that I can keep the promises I make to myself. I’m ready to move into this new chapter with renewed energy to build outward from the foundation I’ve worked so hard to create.
An aside on what did I explore and experiment with over the last three years:
Founding a startup: During that first year while I was on sabbatical, I wanted to create a startup and did some early work on this with a friend. We even made it to a final round of an accelerator program but after continually getting feedback there wasn’t a real market for the business without substantial government support, I shut it down before it ever really started. Not figuring out how to make that work was disappointing and felt like I broke a promise with myself. It really crushed my self-esteem because I always thought I’d be a great founder and I couldn’t even get something off the ground. I am still holding onto this startup idea and would like to do something with it someday — perhaps as social impact or non-profit project instead of a for-profit business. Now that we have all these no-code tools, I think it’s something that I could build a version of with a fraction of the resources and time.
Buying a small business: I also spent some time exploring what it would be like to buy and operate a small business. I ultimately decided that with interest rates as high as they are for SBA (15%+), buying a small business didn’t make sense. I have a former co-worker who actually launched a search fund to buy a small business and I remember feeling envious of how quickly she accomplished that and even more ashamed that while I was thinking about it, here was someone else actually doing it. While it doesn’t really matter, it is worth nothing that she hasn’t acquired a business, so the actual hard part of buying a business is not as easy as it may have seemed initially.
Going back to a full-time W2 job: When I first went on sabbatical, I was hoping that I would be able to launch a startup and not have to go back to a “regular” job, but when we didn’t get selected for the accelerator, I had to contemplate going back and so I started interviewing. It was incredibly painful. There was one interview process where I completely missed the interview, because I meant to reschedule but had not actually emailed them back to do so. If there was ever a sign I did not want that job or any other job, that was it. Ultimately, what made me realize I couldn’t go back to my old life was the moment I realized I was going to get a job offer. When the organization I was interviewing with asked me to share my references (usually the last step) before getting a formal offer, I just knew that I did not want to work there.
Startup advisory: I spent about nine months in 2024 to 2025 advising a pre-seed solar startup. I wanted to explore what part-time, contract work could look like and more importantly, I wanted to explore continuity with my old career, operating and advising startups. I ultimately learned that I do not want to work for someone else in any capacity where I have to report to someone else who makes all the decisions. This was a huge learning, as I romanticized what this could look like until I experienced it and also solidified that it is hard to split your time and mental bandwidth across multiple high-priority focus areas.
Trading and investing: This is one of the first things I jumped into when I got laid off and I taught myself how to trade and invest. It is the one thing that has stuck, has made me money, and has turned into a career that I genuinely enjoy. I’ve written a lot about this transition and now that it’s been two years of doing this full-time, I can still say that I am learning every day and continuing to enjoy this work.
Coding and using AI tools: I went through a very short phase where while I traveling in Thailand I was trying to learn how to code. It never really clicked and I wasn’t really motivated so it fizzled out, but then, the following year, ChatGPT became available and now there are a whole bunch of no-code tools. I’ve used various AI tools to help me code trading algorithms, which has been the best way for me to integrate any of that interest and skillset into my work.
This doesn’t capture the full list, as I’ve spent a lot of time on pottery, being active, trying new activities, immersing myself in art, traveling, and so on. All to say, the last three years have been filled with diverse experiences and experiments. While many didn’t pan out the way I would have hoped, each still provided something valuable in the grand scheme of things. Onwards and upwards!