This month’s goals come at a very interesting time for me personally.
The reason being, I have decided to quit my dentistry job.
I have decided to quit dentistry for many reasons.
- I have lost meaning in my daily work.
- I felt under-appreciated by a changing health-care system that prioritizes customer service over health itself.
- I felt that I could not balance the expectations of my patients, the expectations of my workplace, and my own personal expectations.
- My values are not aligned with where I am currently working.
- I wanted to spend the holiday season with family and focus on the people that matter to me.
- I was feeling burnt out and knew that if I did not give myself a break, I would grow to resent what I do for a living.
- I want to live an intentional life, which means curating out the things that do not bring me joy.
- We have made the lifestyle choices (invest money, spend less, own less, avoid having kids, avoid a large mortgage) necessary to avoid job dependency.
- We have created the boundaries necessary to ignore social expectations and pressures, thus giving us freedom to live how we want.
Despite this freedom, I still have goals. But without the job identity, the goals have shifted slightly.
I think that quitting was very cathartic for me. I admit feeling stressed the last few months, mostly because I was holding on desperately to something I should have let go many months ago. I was fighting an internal battle, one between the past self and future possibility. Finally turning in an official resignation letter did just the trick.
It wasn’t very easy. I felt depressed for a few days, afraid of what I had done, anxious about the future. It’s like any ole break-up. It feels easier to run back to what is familiar and feels safe, even after you’ve outgrown the past. It takes a lot of reserve to not turn back. Luckily, the sadness and fear did not last long. After I sat through my emotions, I started to really notice a shift in my personality.
- I sang songs randomly, after years of refusing to listen to music in case it over-whelmed my mind.
- I smiled more frequently, and was more open to socializing. I connected with a high school friend, decided to make time for my grandma’s birthday party, and even drove to East LA on a Friday evening after work to grab tacos with my mother-in-law at a stand that she used to eat tacos at when she was my age.
- I picked up old habits, like learning about photography, doing art, and playing guitar.
- I connected with my husband more, rekindling our dumb banter from the college days.
For November’s monthly goals, I am sharing with you a TIME OFF BUCKET LIST. Even though my time off doesn’t start until November 19, I have decided not to wait until my last day of work to start living life to the fullest. This bucket list contains a number of goals I have always wanted to accomplish but have put on pause in order to partake in an American Dream.
As some people already know from my Instagram, we are taking a few long trips over the course of three weeks from November to December. I have lived in California since 1998 and I have yet to actually see it. I find that a shame.
It’s got me thinking, how much of our life are we actually wasting away doing things that don’t really matter in exchange for stuff that don’t really make us happy?
Not that I have the answers.
Just that I am trying to figure it out.
TheDebtist’s TIME OFF BUCKET LIST
- Create Spotify playlists for different occasions and moods
- Improve Photography Skills
- Learn French
- Improve Guitar Skills
- Explore California National Parks
- Visit old friends
- Write a book – and self-publish it
- Create more courses
- Get into artwork again
- Visit a Japanese spa (because we can’t go to Japan)
- Go to a butterfly sanctuary
- Go birdwatching in the San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary
- Explore tide pools for hours
- “Live” on a farm – milk a cow or extract honey from a beehive
- Learn recipes of my homeland from my mom
- Hug a Redwood tree
- Tour a lighthouse
- Learn to make alfajores
- Bake someone’s wedding cake
- Do a cold bath dunk
- Bake the following from the Tartine Book: Gingerbread Cookies, Spiked Cocktail Nuts, Brownies, Chocolate Pots de Crème, Devil’s Food Layer Cake, Lemon Meringue Cake, Pastel de Tres Leches
- Eat Pho for the first time (yes!)
- Learn how to make ramen from Mike
- Master a few advanced level yoga poses
- Learn how to sit on my hands
I add the last one, because just like anything, I always dive headfirst into something new, including this “mini-retirement”. Supposedly it’s a chance for me to figure myself out. Somehow I have to balance that with living life to the fullest. Like I said before, I’m still figuring it out. But honestly, thank you for joining me on this wild ride.
If you have any other bucket list ideas, do share! Who knows when my next mini-retirement will be.
