10-Chasing Freedom at the Worst Possible Time
By 2019, something in me had shifted.
Tokyo was gearing up for the Olympics. Tourism was booming.
The city was alive with possibility—and I could feel the wave rising beneath my feet.
I looked around at my job:
Unpaid overtime.
Clients who couldn’t pay us.
A salary that hadn’t moved in years.
And weekends spent in the office while my dreams waited outside.
I knew if I didn’t make a move now, I’d still be stuck there at 40.
Still burned out. Still single. Still wondering what could’ve been.
So I did what felt unthinkable just months earlier—
I handed in my resignation.
I didn’t have everything figured out.
But I had energy, direction, and something even more powerful than a plan:
hope.
It was time to stop calculating for others and start building something of my own.
I knew, there were plenty of guests waiting for my guiding.
But what I didn’t know—what I couldn’t have known—
was that I had just quit my job at the worst possible moment.
That the next three years would become a kind of living hell.
That 2020 would rewrite everything.
