Saying Deuces to my First Job and Hello to an Older Dream

**so let me preface this journey/blog that I don't have good Wi-Fi network / no Wi-Fi at all so excuse any brevity or formatting ugliness**

**p.s thanks for reading this and coming along with me**

So I've read those stories, as I'm sure most of us have, where a person just ups and quits their 9 to 5 job (though who really works just only 9-5? I wanna know) and goes travel somewhere or does something radically different. My usual reaction is wow good for them for breaking their corporate chains... How fearless to give up a steady paycheck!.. They must have had a nice safety net or something..I cold never do that. Yadda yadda yadda. The point is: I've always thought that story was someone else's narrative, never mine..Until one day it did or at least it became part of mine.

Since college started, I knew I wanted to get into international development. Case in point a short bio I wrote around May 2012 for the website of the leadership cohort I was in when I was a sophomore in college (shout out to Buckeye Leadership Fellows):

So I knew I wanted to help people in a meaningful way but I didn't know how. How did my skillset and passions (ugh I hate that word...so interviewy *cringe*) manifest itself into an actual job? When I was reading Marina Keegan's book The Opposite of Loneliness, she wrote a chapter where she asked her classmates at Yale what they were doing after graduation. A lot of them said they were going into consulting or some type of financial services to get experience before they really pursue what they want to do. Ohhhkay so I guess my postgrad experience wasn't so special. And some of the reactions I get when I tell people what I'm doing in Kenya, they say 'Oh I want to do something like that' or something along those lines. When I hear stuff like that or read things like what Marina wrote, I get weird mixed feelings of validation and a little indignation (hey I though I was the only one going through this.. and hey I'm not the only one going through this) and a little sadness. Most of us just want to do something that matters. And maybe it's a cliche of my generation that we were taught yeah we can change the world for the better and all that hippie dippy sh- errr poop, but why not? I'm not that different or special from anyone else who wants to.

But I digress...

5 and a half years (!!) after writing down my goals for the BLF website and I'm finally where I want to be... Or at least closer than where I was before. Maybe I'm not cut out for this or maybe it's not cut out for me. Maybe I'll have to move back home with the parents or become a corporate slave again. It's a huge leap of faith and its a little nerve wracking but it's like Drake said: I'm not here for a long time. I'm just here for a good time.

I get asked a lot what my family thinks. Obviously they're supportive, but anything besides that I try not to think about. Otherwise I'll be crushed with guilt- the oldest-child guilt, the Asian family guilt, the Catholic guilt..etc. I'll start getting upset and that's when the doubt and uncertainty will creep in, and doubt is something I can't have. Fear maybe (OK definitely a little-to-moderate amount) but not doubt. If I don't do this because of doubt, then I will live the rest of my life doubting everything else I do and everything I believe in. And honestly that just sounds like a lot of expensive therapy that I can't afford.

Maybe that sounds selfish (ughhh shut up, guilt!) and I know my parents and family are worried (Mom, Dad I'm doing fine really!). I don't take that lightly (see being crushed by guilt mentioned above), but this has been an experience of a lifetime at least 5 years in the making.