I was officially retired. Although I didn’t know it at the time. There was no official sendoff or celebration with my closest friends. My retirement was not the result of a carefully planned investment portfolio or the selloff of a lucrative tech company I created in my twenties.
Just five years ago, what now seems like a lifetime, I was at the top of my game. I had successfully launched and published a magazine and personally fostered its growth from infancy to success, taking it as far as it could sustainably go. I was living in a desirable neighborhood at the center of the rapidly expanding city of Austin, Texas, the next Silicon Valley. I lived on less than I made. By all external worldly measurements my life was enviable. And yet, deep within, the quiet whisper of my soul knew that something, perhaps the most important thing, was missing. It all seemed like an empty game I was playing. The same game everyone else was playing.
And so, with the reserves in my bank account from the sale of my house, I made a mindful but risky decision, rather than invest that money into another house and another 30-year mortgage, I was going to roll the dice and fully invest a portion of my reserves into myself, a year of my own design. I was going to listen to the quiet whisper of my soul to see where it led.
It led me to Kyoto, Japan, where I would live for a year and immerse myself into the arts and culture of Japan and develop a deep love for its people. In every sense of the word, it was the best investment I have ever made an to this day I continue to reap the returns.
My well-crafted plan had been to live for a year in Kyoto on a small percentage of my reserves and then return to the U.S. with a new perspective on life and begin a new chapter and perhaps a new business venture. While I did return with an entirely new perspective on life, I also returned with a much smaller portion of my reserves and an unknown virus that was just beginning to spread which would change life as we knew it for the foreseeable future.
For the next fifteen months I lived in quarantine and did my best not only to launch a new business venture, but also took my resume of 25 years in business and tried in every available direction to market my skills for a job amidst a new and uncertain environment.
Absolutely nothing I tried worked and all of my efforts proved unsuccessful. I managed to land only one single interview in fifteen months, during which the twenty-something interviewer asked with a bubbly voice why someone with my experience would be applying for such a position. The job paid what I had earned when I was 23 years old. I was now at the mercy of AI algorithms and an and unrecognizable workforce made up of twenty and thirtysomethings. Times were desperate.
I resorted to working in a garden nursery, raking gravel in Zen like patterns while customers looked on in bewilderment. Some young kid ordered me around while blowing cigarette smoke in my face. I unloaded delivery trucks, mainly to be surrounded by nature for my own sanity during the pandemic. I delivered door-to-door food orders for several months, developing great compassion for the many people earning their way on menial labor and tips while gas prices went up. People in luxurious neighborhoods having dinner delivered to their front door couldn’t seem to spare a few dollars for a tip. For two straight years I filed for less than $2,000 in annual income. I was still completely oblivious and unaware of it at this time, but I was now officially and unexpectedly retired. It seemed I was no longer relevant or marketable in a new world of rapidly developing technology, AI and cryptocurrency. There was no going back to my former way of life.
And so I did what any reasonable person would do when offered the opportunity, I packed a single bag that I could live on for three months and headed for beautiful Costa Rica. I was fortunate to have been a respectful guest some nine years ago and befriended the S. African couple who owned the Airbnb on my first solo adventure to Costa Rica. Over the following ten years we had kept in touch and they remembered my care for their place and my natural appreciation and connection with the pura vida lifestyle of Costa Rica. So they said they knew I was the person for the job and extended me the opportunity to manage their eight rental properties along the Guanacaste coast for three months during the rainy season while they traveled. It would be the perfect reset from almost two years of the pandemic in the U.S.
My original plan had been to go to Costa Rica for a three-month reset and then return to the U.S. to give it another try to enter the marketplace. That has now been three years ago and has taken me on a never ending adventure through Central and South America. I lived for three months on the Costa Rica coast and have since lived for six months in Boquete, Panama, almost two years on a secluded mountaintop in Costa Rica and now I am writing from the Andes Mountains in Cusco, Peru. I have crossed the border more than six times and have been on something a of a vagabond journey ever since.
The simple fact is that for better or for worse, I am now officially retired from the corporate work world and have been for four adventurous years. During these past few years I have worked several freelance jobs from sales to writing, I have since become certified as teacher of Business English and now teach English to executives in the largest bank and pharmaceutical company in Japan in the early mornings and evening hours.
I have written numerous articles for publication, all of which added up could be considered food money. Between teaching English and writing articles a simple way of life has been possible for me on such a modest income in places like Costa Rica, Panama and Peru. I essentially have zero footprint as I travel on foot or by bus and my apartments usually cost me less than most people pay for their car payment.
I wish I could say that my story and journey to retirement was a glamorous and well-crafted success story. It would be great to now write a best-seller on how to retire a decade and a half early.
The real truth about my journey is that it was a slow grind on a dusty road full of many potholes and obstacles and angels who helped me along the way. I suppose otherwise it would not have been such an interesting and exciting adventure and I wouldn’t have many stories to write about. I have no portfolio that will cushion me in the years ahead. I don’t even understand what Bitcoin is. I suppose this keeps me hungry and always forging my way ahead one chapter of the journey at a time. I now live in a place where I feel gratitude for my place in life instead of wanting more.
However, I have found it remarkable the number of people in the modern world who express envy and admiration at the life I am living. In many ways, it is a life that many years ago I envisioned for myself one day way off in the distance. I dreamed of this as I was sitting in my cubicle at a computer screen for most of the day. Many people work hard and save and dream for decades about when they will one day retire someday off on the horizon.
Somehow this is the life I have created and these are my days now, however the winding road and journey got me here. I now live a simple and sustainable life surrounded by a much less modern culture in one of the most beautiful parts of the world. I write a little. I play my small part by helping people on the other side of the world learn to speak English. It is rewarding in that it is a tangible and meaningful way to earn one’s way for an honest day’s work.
I may be officially retired in terms of my relevance and marketability in this new and advancing technological world, but my life is good, my days are peaceful and I have found a contentment that no financial portfolio can ever buy.
Field Notes
To live content with small means.
To seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion.
To be worthy not respectable,
and wealthy not rich.
To study hard, think quietly, talk gently,
act frankly, to listen to stars, birds, babes,
and sages with open heart, to bear all cheerfully,
do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never.
In a word, to let the spiritual,
unbidden and unconscious,
Grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.
~ William Ellery Channing
“My Symphony”
Travelogues
Enjoy four years of past articles from the Zen and Ink Journals journey in the archives.
Published Travel Articles
Enjoy published articles from my last four years of travel.
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Zen and Ink Journals represents hundreds of hours of writing over the past decade, sometimes from a train in remote China or a coffee shop in Kyoto, a hammock in Costa Rica or a simple cabin on a mountaintop in Boquete, Panama or Ciudad Colón.
On these pages, I share my observations of kindness and beauty from my adventures in the world and invite you to listen quietly for the call within you to explore the places that beckon your soul.
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