For the past 10 years, I had a corporate marketing job. No doubt, that experience allowed me to live and work in another country, fast track on learning professionally and personally. Looking back, I shouldn’t and wouldn’t complain about that chapter of my life.
At one point though, I can’t stop asking myself:
- Am I really always engaged in all these hours-long meetings?
- Do I deep down share the same excitement my sales manager seems to have, reaching our year end target?
- Do I learn new things that is relevant to me everyday (bare in mind one can always ‘learn’ something but relevance is the key), feeling energized and cannot wait to go back to work?
I guess the bottomline is this: Work takes up more than 10 of my waking hours a day (easily!), is what I am doing everyday worth my while? Do I love my life?
After much consideration and experimentation, And I traded my “bright-future” job for an ADVENTURE!
Being here in Detroit, I am living in a completely different universe: out of my comfort zone and away from my family & friends; a different world of social dynamics, culture & language; and I often find myself doing things that I’ve never thought of doing before. I’ve never even mowed a lawn before coming to the US and now I am doing renovation work here! There have been days that we needed clean up shit all day long after a sewer malfunction (no kidding!), our walls have literally melted down on us while repairing the plaster, our vacant property was broken into on multiple occasions (luckily not much was taken), and so many nights we have come home past midnight after being so focused on our work that we’ve forgotten to eat all day! Exhausted and hungry, there were moments when I thought – WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING HERE?
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Fast forward a few months… 2 weeks ago we were part of a pilot shoot for a potential TV show. From our brief encounter with the tv host and renovation expert, we’ve learned so much more about our house! Our admiration grows every day for those who put their hearts, efforts and resources together to build this beautiful home that we are now the stewards of. And this time, I know we are doing something that’s worthwhile, not only on a personal level but also as part of something much bigger. It gets me really excited to bring a piece of history back to life and through which contributes to the rebirth of our beautiful neighborhood and the once great city of Detroit that is becoming great again.
In between juggling all our projects and renovation work, sometimes it’s easy to forget the bigger picture, seeing the setbacks more than the progress. But while I am writing this at our ‘13.1073741828.535528249829868/906256076090415/?type=1&theater" target="_blank">branch office‘ (aka backyard office under a tree branch) under a beautiful blue sky, reaffirming what we are doing, I can say I am absolutely loving my life and living in the moment.
It has taken a lot of time and hard work to get here, but it all began with a leap of faith.