Seven months ago, I wrote a blog post “Why I’m Leaving“, explaining why I was going to quit my cushy job to do…..
……well, I didn’t actually know what.
But if you’ve followed my blog since then, you’ll know that I did end up deciding – ha, pretty quickly, I might add – that I’d just simply…… travel the world. Fairly easy decision, if you know me at all.
So that’s what I did: China. Argentina. Antarctica. Italy. Ireland. Iceland. I tried to hit some travel goals, witnessed some truly ineffable sights, and met countless inspiring people along the way. It’d been a wild ride.
At the end of March of this year, my trip to Iceland winding down, I pulled up the Mint app on my phone and took a look at my Savings Account balance…….. to my utter horror.
GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZ – oh lookie tax refund – but omg still GEEEEEEEEEEEEEZ
And that’s when panic set in. My obedient, overachieving-Asian primal instincts kicked into gear, and I decided once and for all: I needed to get my life/career back in order the moment I stepped foot on U.S. soil again.
Needless to say, I can’t say I slept very well those last few nights in Iceland. The dread was all too real.
As promised, I almost immediately got to work the moment I touched ground in California. Coffee shop everyday for that first week, fixing up my résumé, browsing career sites, writing cover letters. Or at least I tried to. As you’d expect, I was VERY rusty. It had been four months since my brain had to do anything beyond deciding what I would eat and do the next day. Real primitive stuff. I was basically a caveman… a, uhhh, raver post-EDC weekend, if you catch my drift….
I think by the end of that first week, I had looked through 50+ company sites and written 10 distinct cover letters. Man, did this feel like applying to college again, and I didn’t miss it one bit. Then came the dreaded Waiting-Game-of-Doom, as rejections flowed in at a … rather humbling rate.
If you really want to test your self-worth, try going through interviews while unemployed. That’ll surely do it. Nothing will get at your core more than a recruiter asking you why you quit your (seemingly perfect) job to travel, a slight judgey tinge to her voice. Immediately after every phone interview, I’d almost always collapse on the floor of my mother’s bedroom (she had the best phone signal in there) and stare at the ceiling for like 20 minutes amidst a mini identity crisis.
It honestly felt like so much longer, but fast forward 3 weeks onboard the ever-nauseating unemployment rollercoaster, and I was able to sign an offer with an amazing company in San Francisco.
I won’t get into details, but that cobweb-ridden caveman brain that I developed during unemployment? Oh, oops I quickly realized after starting the new gig that my brain had quite possibly been atrophying for the entire five years since graduation and only now do I have to restart the generator on most parts of my brain……..
Stay nimble, kids.
I find myself working harder than ever before, and, unfortunately, still staring up at the ceiling for 20 minutes on the daily – but less because of an identity crisis, more because “don’t-talk-to-me-my-brain-is-utter-mush”.
So TL;DR – I’m fine, just once again caught in the inescapable spider web that is Corporate America – and all by my own doing. That is my explanation for the radio silence as of late. No comprehensive recap of my Icelandic adventures, because, well, I’ve been too busy staring at the (probably-more-titillating-than-I-give-it-credit-for) ceiling the last 3 months.
But that will change! More to come soooooon…..
Very very soooooooon…..
Toodaloo!
Mendi
the wanderlust is real. 