I can directly pinpoint the moment that triggered the unraveling of my tightly woven work identity. I was 26 years old, saying goodbye to my grandfather’s 88-year-old brother for the last time in his kitchen in Melbourne, Australia. I’d visited him and his wife three times in total during my month-long stay, each time listening to stories of my grandfather, who owned restaurants in New Jersey and could never take time off to return to Greece or visit Down Under. Ironically, I’d spent my own first week “off” at the State Library Victoria, working on articles I hadn’t finished before I left.
“Are you going to be okay when you go back?” he asked me as we got up from the table. “Yes,” I reassured him. “I told you I’m using PTO. I’ll just go back to work when I return.” He nodded once before adding, “Don’t work too hard; they’ll just replace you when you die.”
I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the first thread pulled. One year later, at the age of 27, I quit my job at BuzzFeed with a five-hour notice while munching on McDonald’s — feeling neither excitement nor anxiety. Not long after, I found myself sitting at a café in Chiang Mai, Thailand called Melbourne Story (unemployed and training seven hours a day in Muay Thai) when I noticed a familiar building in a photo on the wall: the State Library Victoria. The irony wasn’t lost on me. In fact, it felt serendipitous in a way; I had traveled thousands of miles only to end up looking at the same building — but this time without a laptop open in front of me.
Throughout my 20s, I was your classic workaholic — the ideal capitalist. I had been working in corporate America since I was 22. Don’t get me wrong, I did my share of traveling — spending months in Honolulu, Vancouver, Austin, Chicago, Montreal, and more — but I rarely took time off, working in the backseat during roadtrips or checking my email while walking between clubs on nights out.
On paper, it seemed to pay off. I was promoted just about every year, working my way up from being an assistant to managing people. But instead of feeling increasing pride or accomplishment, I began feeling the classic, hubristic hero’s disconnect of stagnation and emptiness. My relationship with myself and my friends seemed to have fallen to the wayside, and I think I even developed some level of social anxiety from going out so infrequently.
A couple months after my 26th birthday (one year past the age by which my friends told me I’d have a heart attack because of how obsessed I was with my job), I sat in a Starbucks in Miami on a video call with my manager while my friends swam in South Beach. HR had just denied my request to work remotely from Melbourne, Australia for a month, suggesting I instead use some of my 200-plus hours of PTO. Reluctantly, I agreed. Even then, I still had tens of hours left over, and even more paid out when I quit.
Now, at 28, one year post-resignation, I barely recognize that version of myself. I’ve spent six months wandering through Asia, unraveling everything I thought I knew about work, success, and identity — not in an Instagram-filtered “finding myself” montage, but in the messy, contradictory, often uncomfortable way that real transformation happens.
That said, here are six truths I’ve learned — after quitting my corporate job, solo-traveling across Asia, and slowly dismantling the scaffolding of my work identity — that redefined how I think about work and life.
1.
Fear Is (Usually) the First Step
Months before quitting, I was haunted by the fear that I was falling for an escapist fantasy and would end up desolate and broke, having traded biweekly paychecks for crushing regrets. I’d lie in bed at night, my phone suspended above my face, as my fingers automatically typed “quit job due to burnout” and “quit job to travel” into Chrome for the hundredth time. My right thumb had perfected the routine: scroll, click, skim, back to results, repeat. I was searching for permission that no one could really give me.
By the time I finally sent my resignation email, I was emotionally depleted. I had a stable income, health insurance, and a clear career trajectory — all the things we’re conditioned to value above our sanity and well-being — yet I felt nothing as I walked away. Not even a twinge of anxiety or relief as I deleted Slack from my phone.
There were many moments of fear, paranoia, uncertainty, and loneliness leading up to the moment I quit — and even after — but they seem inconsequential looking back. It’s funny how the mind smooths those things out in the end, like the static of an old movie. I went from being so frustrated with work to roaming the streets of Chiang Mai alone wondering, “What now? Who am I now?”
And yet, it seems so straightforward in hindsight. I loved my job. Then I got curious about going part-time. Then I hated it. Then I wanted out. But it was by no means some impulsive or easy decision. In actuality, it took months of painful untangling and disengaging to even consider quitting, let alone follow through. And it happened in the small moments — forgetting simple things, zoning out mid-conversation, feeling detached from experiences I knew I should be enjoying. I’d sit at my laptop, fingers hovering over the keyboard, and feel nothing. That scared me more than the exhaustion ever had. During time, I saw multiple mental health professionals and tried even more prescription meds in an attempt to deny that I was fraying and smooth down the edges. Was this job worth medicating myself for?
Now, I feel like a fuller version of myself. I still remember looking out over Bangkok from a rooftop bar with two friends from my hostel, and it really hit me that I was doing this. Suddenly — as cliché as it sounds — I was dancing at drag shows and exploring night markets instead of crafting corporate emails. The anxiety never fully disappeared, but it transformed into something kinetic — something that made me feel part of the world, not just of it.
2.
Time Moves Differently When It’s (Actually) Yours
In (corporate) America, everything is a commodity — even, or rather, especially time. I was always running out of it, could never seem to get enough of it and measured everything by it. If I didn’t have enough, I’d buy more, paying for my food to be delivered to me or calling an Uber to avoid public transit. Obviously, those are still privileges that I could afford, but I mean to say I was simply trading one for the other.
When I was 24, I spent three months living in Hawaii while working remotely. Each morning, I’d wake up to the sparkling Pacific Ocean through my 19th-floor window, only to immediately open Gmail on my corporate-issued 2015 MacBook Pro. By 6 a.m. Hawaiian time, I was furiously typing Slack messages as the sun rose behind me, just outside my balcony doors.
“Is it okay to message you now? What time is it for you?” colleagues would ask. “Yeah, it’s fine. I’m working,” I’d dismiss before googling how to turn off Slack’s time zone feature.
Even in such a beautiful place, I had commodified my time. When my friend came to visit, I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t understand that I’d taken on three projects in February — an already shortened month — so I wouldn’t be taking a day off just because she was staying with me. Instead, I acquiesced to giving her one day in March if she was still around. By the time I left the islands, I had taken exactly two days off.
During my travels, I discovered what time actually feels like when you’re not selling it to someone else 40-plus hours a week. A day in Siem Reap or Hanoi or Hong Kong or Korea contained multitudes compared to my former days at the office. I could do a sunrise tour (of Angkor Wat), have multiple meaningful conversations with strangers, get lost in a night market, read for hours in a café, and still have time to journal about it all before bed. Time expanded in ways I couldn’t have imagined.
3.
I Didn’t Feel Successful Until I Stopped Trying to Prove It
Before quitting, I measured my worth in metrics, KPIs, and performance reviews. Even when I was objectively performing well, I felt hollow inside. I struggled to see myself beyond my accomplishments, and even then I downplayed them incessantly. I constantly told myself I’d buy something — a perfume, a bag, whatever — when I got promoted to celebrate. And yet, each promotion just left me waiting for the next.
Six months of traveling redefined success entirely. Suddenly, it was about moments of genuine presence: learning to make a traditional lantern at a family workshop in Hoi An, exploring the Cloud Forest at the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, sliding down sand dunes in Mui Ne, and wiping out so spectacularly I still have the scars.
In fact, on my 129th day of traveling, while in Macau, I did something I never would have imagined myself doing. Standing on a platform 764 feet above a concrete parking lot, I bungee jumped off Macau Tower — the tallest commercial bungee jump in the world. I had woken up that morning in Hong Kong planning to visit some casinos, but when I saw “World’s Highest Bungy Jump” listed as an attraction, something in me just knew. And when the countdown hit one, I didn’t hesitate. I jumped.
Success, it turns out, isn’t something you can only achieve — it’s something you can experience. As I sat at a coffee shop in Vietnam, I realized that I finally had more of a vision of not only who I wanted to be but also how I wanted to be.
4.
Your Identity Isn’t Your Job Title
“So, what do you do?” It’s one of the first questions you’re asked in America — and for years, it defined me. I built scaffolding around my professional identity, confusing my title with my value. It gave structure to my days, decisions, and sense of worth. I feared that, without it, I’d somehow (cinematically) realize I’d been drinking the corporate Kool-Aid and resign myself to working to live, abandoning my ambitions.
In Australia, before I’d even quit, I noticed something striking: Nobody ever asked about education, let alone work. Instead, my friend and I stared in surprise at hastily taped notices on locked doors of Melbourne storefronts — some handwritten, others printed in default Calibri font — all sharing the same message: “Closed for summer break.” Not for a day or two but for weeks. These shop owners seemed to value their time more than their income, a concept that felt foreign to my American sensibilities.
After I completed my exit interview and logged out for the last time, I felt lost. Who was I without my company email signature and LinkedIn headline? As it turns out, I’m a whole person I hadn’t fully met yet. At a Muay Thai camp in Chiang Mai, I reconnected with my body, having started martial arts at age 9 and stopping at 16. In Vietnam, I (at first reluctantly) trusted locals to guide me, hopping on sleeper buses for 16-hour trips knowing nothing but the name of the next town. In Hong Kong, I visited the tallest rooftop bar in the world. In South Korea, I reflected on my grandparents’ experiences as I visited the Korean War Memorial.
And yet none of these things had to do with a job or title. As obvious as it seems to say, the more I traveled, the more I realized that people outside the American bubble rarely defined themselves by their occupation. They were fathers, sisters, adventurers, martial artists, storytellers — full human beings whose value wasn’t determined by a company org chart. And slowly, I began to see myself that way, too: not as a former editor, but as someone with curiosities, talents, and connections that existed completely independent of any work identity.
5.
Loneliness Can Be Both Excruciating and Transformative
There were nights in hotel rooms when loneliness hit with physical force. Without the constant distraction of team meetings, happy hours, and Slack notifications, I was left with myself and the deafening silence of my own thoughts. At first, it felt deeply uncomfortable. I was constantly exhausted from the burnout, but still felt restless, unable to shake the idea of productivity.
During my first few months in Thailand, I trained in Muay Thai. The gym gave me a sense of structure and community — we trained, ate, and lived together. It felt stable. But in a way, it also allowed me to avoid processing everything after I quit. It was all so demanding and exciting that I just transferred all of my energy into training and socializing instead of sitting with my resignation and disillusionment. As a result, leaving carried more weight and emptiness than it would have otherwise.
When I left for Cambodia alone, I finally had to face myself. And honestly, I really struggled with it — despite being someone who has happily moved to unfamiliar cities completely alone for months at a time. I felt an undeniable sense of loss and exhaustion. Part of me yearned to go back to Chiang Mai, or even just fly home. But another part of me knew I needed to sit with why I took the trip in the first place. In my stronger moments, I accepted that it was all part of the dichotomy of the experience.
Eventually, the sadness and loneliness came in waves that I could ride instead of a rip current that dragged me out to sea. And in that uncomfortable solitude that followed, something shifted. Long bus rides became small sanctuaries — 16 hours with no pressure to perform or be productive, just quiet time to stare out the window and exist. These small surrenders felt like a new kind of freedom.
I also found connection in fleeting encounters — ones that held no networking purpose. A homestay host who drove me to the bus station on his motorbike. A tailor who laughed when I told her I wanted the clothes to help me look thinner, but keep the ass. An old man on a sleeper bus who hid my earbuds during a pit stop so they wouldn’t get stolen. Bartenders who comped my drinks just because as we talked about life.
I was often alone and couldn’t always speak the language, but these interactions touched me the most and reminded me of our shared humanity. Yes, the loneliness was sharp — but it made these spontaneous, sincere connections stand out and light up my trip as much as the new constellations I saw.
6.
When I Let Go, Life Didn’t Collapse — It Opened
This realization wasn’t depressing like I’d feared — it was liberating. I had spent years in what Albert Camus might call “the motionless world of hopes,” where everything felt coherent inside the corporate bubble. But with distance, that coherence unraveled. From a café in Singapore or a cable car in Vietnam, the rituals of American work culture began to look absurd: the relentless pursuit of promotions, the sacrifice of health for performance reviews, the recurring Sunday-night dread.
If the world kept spinning without my constant attention to emails and Slack threads, maybe I could build a life that didn’t orbit around urgency and artificial deadlines. After all, they’d just replace me when I die.
That doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned ambition. I’ve simply redefined it. I still work — intentionally, on my terms. I’ve built a freelance career that allows for freedom and focus. I no longer measure my worth by hours logged or emails answered. And while my old workaholic instincts still flicker, I can see them now for what they are: echoes of a system I’ve acknowledged and outgrown.
While I used to fear that quitting would drain me of drive, I’ve since realized it’s simply clarified it. Structure and routine still matter — not as tools for productivity, but as scaffolding for a life I want to live. They allow me to direct my thoughts instead of constantly chasing or avoiding them. Before, even in burnout, I’d just say yes to everything, from invitations from friends to deadlines for work. I’d fend off sleep in a desperate effort to bargain for more time. I was overwhelmed, and I’d ultimately lose myself in those moments.
Now, I’ve reclaimed the quiet. In fact, some of my happiest memories abroad weren’t grand adventures, but small moments: the sun warming my face after doing crunches at the Muay Thai gym or sitting at a restaurant in the mountains, the sudden realization that I felt no guilt or urgency — just the quiet, almost childlike feeling of being alive.
My Biggest Takeaway: Don’t Regret Not Doing Something!
It’s been about a year since I left the US with a one-way ticket to Asia. I won’t pretend returning to “real life” was seamless. Reverse culture shock hit hard. My savings dwindled, and eventually, I had to figure out income again. But even now, when I’m “back” in North America, I find myself living differently. I spent my summer and winter along the St. Lawrence River, only rejoining life in the States for the fall. Because once you see the fragmentation of what you thought was whole — your identity, your relationship to time, your idea of success — you can’t unsee it.
When I was afraid of quitting, I was more driven by the thought of being 45 and bogged down with responsibilities, regretting not having quit more than regretting having quit, even if I ended up broke and on my ass.
Naturally, this kind of advice necessitates a level of trust in yourself and acceptance of not having everything figured out. But if you’ve got those two things down enough, then it’s a perspective that embraces passion, risk, and proactivity. It challenges you to think beyond your immediate fears and envision how you’d feel in the future if you let opportunities slip by. Of course, I also recognize that I was fortunate to be able to choose this for myself — not only financially but personally, without the responsibility of caring for dependents.
Before I decided to quit, I read countless articles about burnout that offered practical advice in a capitalist world. While some provided insight into how they saved up enough money to quit, others shared snippets of general overwhelm from their jobs that led them to make the call. I felt mildly comforted by the few that touched upon their lack of social life and deteriorating mental health. And no matter the angle, the articles unanimously concluded that quitting was not only the right decision but a necessary one.
I related to them all on some level — perhaps unsurprisingly so given that nearly a quarter of employees in the US rated their burnout levels as high or extremely high in 2023 — and maybe that was the problem. I already knew what they were telling me. I wasn’t looking for confirmation that I had enough savings or that the decision to travel would be the best I’d ever made. Really, I just wanted to know that I’d done everything right and that it was only natural to burn out at 27 and that it was okay to give up a stable career in an era of mass layoffs (four of which I’d already survived).
So if this resonates, I hope it helps you feel a little less alone. Sometimes I wonder if my six months in Asia were an escape from life — but honestly, I think they were a crash course in living it. If nothing else, I’ve gained clarity around who I want to be and how I want to be. Maybe that sounds philosophical or naïve, especially in this economy. I still stress about money. But for the first time in a while, I feel grounded — rather than unsure or forced. Maybe I’m just growing into myself.
Throughout the last year or two, I’ve often said that I’ve felt like a caterpillar entering my chrysalis, my body dissolving into the goo of the pupal phase in hopes of transforming into a butterfly… And lately, I’ve seen a lot of butterflies.
Have you felt burnt out or quit your job before? Have you considered it? I’m really interested to hear your thoughts in the comments below! Thanks for reading!
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