I quit my $115k tech job 3 years ago and I still hardly know what I'm doing

But at least I'm trying something out.

In January of 2022, I was hired to be a product manager for a remote tech startup with a starting salary of $115k. I was 22 and had just graduated college in the spring of 2021. Before this, I had worked minimum wage jobs from 7th grade until college graduation: lifeguard, camp counselor, math/business strategy tutor, soccer referee, babysitter, in a library, in a lab etc. My mind and body were revolting every day I worked this tech job, but I had no logical reason to quit. I was waiting for the universe to give me a sign to leave, and after 1.25 years, the sign which unfolded was a group bike ride across the United States. I worked this high paying tech job until May of 2023, about one week before the start of this fundraiser bike tour. I biked 4000 miles from Baltimore to San Francisco with 11 strangers as we raised money for the Ulman Foundation, then I decided to bike New Zealand (and part of Australia) just a few months after the U.S. tour ended. When I quit my job, I had no plan but to bike as long as I could and see what happened next. I wanted to get physically as far away as possible from everything I had felt.

I lived off of my savings from June of 2023 until about May of 2024. I had subletters live in my apartment while I traveled to help offset the cost of rent. I watched my savings account dwindle, but I knew I would be fine for about a year before real panic would set in. I stretched my money while investing it back into myself. I learned that I felt healthier and happier biking 70 miles a day and sleeping on the ground than I did working on a computer in my nice apartment. I visited multiple doctors appointments a week. I let myself sleep 10 hours a night when I wasn’t taken over by insomnia. I pursued my impulsive interests such as sewing or transportation design. I took time to nurture myself as a person first, and a resume second.

Coffee outside on the West Coast of New Zealand, 2023

I biked far. I enjoyed the freedom I had while I could. I taught myself how to edit YouTube videos (hardly). I journaled my contemplations whenever I felt like it. I chose not to post on Instagram for a whole summer of biking across the US, then I posted on Instagram regularly when I biked New Zealand. I decided I should try to be a tour guide so I could continue life on the road.

I figured I would instantly get a job as a bike tour guide wherever I applied- I had biked across the USA, New Zealand, 10 countries in Europe, lived car-free and went bikepacking regularly. I would be an instant hiree, right?

It took me 2 years to get to where I am now, a tour guide for multi-day bike trips. And it’s still not my full salary. I started off as a tour guide in Washington D.C. leading 3 hour tours around the National Mall to get my foot in the door. I haven’t had a steady paycheck since I left my tech job in 2023, and I’ve not increased my personal wealth since my time in tech. If it wasn’t for my monthly deposits into some investment app I set up in 2022, I wouldn’t be investing anything at all.

The average life/career transition takes 3-5 years (apparently). I’m on year 3 and it feels like it’s been taking forever. I thought it would only take me one (cue every Instagram business baddie telling you how to make $2k a week with some easy life hack). I don’t even know what I’m transitioning to half the time. It feels as if my experiments, tangential passions and time going to doctors to get very few answers have led me to nowhere. I know I am somewhere (I am, quite literally, in Easton, Maryland, leading a bike tour this week), but I still wonder if I should try out something else, such as getting a traditional white collar job or going back to school. I think about “normal” careers still, but I know that those would kill me inside out.

I hate being stuck on a computer. I hate waking up inside a box every day to enter the box of your car to the box of an office to the fluorescent box of a computer just to stare at a fluorescent of a phone when you’re bored of the computer. Hate is a strong word, but when the prescribed lifestyle for so many of us made me have a 50 point bulleted list of strange physical & mental ailments that no doctor could answer, the only truth was “this is going to kill me if I keep moving forward”.

Life was meant to be lived. We were meant to touch grass. To listen to the birds sing. To hear ourselves and other sing. To stare into the distance a several times a day without checking our phone. To experience the variety of the flowers coming into bloom in spring to the leaves falling to the ground in autumn.

We were meant to see the fruits of our labor. To talk to real people, not message them over Slack. We were meant to build things with people, for the benefit of people, and enjoy the struggle of it. We were not meant to work a full-time job with a side hustle just to pay off an expensive car. We were not meant to be automated machines for someone else- we were meant to be creative and engineering. We were meant to feel ownership over the things we touch and do, even if that thing is just fermenting your vegetables or sewing a hole in your pants.

We were meant to breathe. Breathe in, and breathe out.

When you enter a career crisis, you become four different versions of yourself: the archaeologist, the photographer, the scientist, and the gardener. I’m not entirely sure which stage I am in- it feels like I jump around between each of them whenever I please. This week I have restarted my seasonal job as a tour guide for active luxury vacations, where our clientele has an average age of 74. They tell me that my generation doesn’t stick with a job, let alone a career, for more than a few years. They say that their generation stuck with a career, but maybe switched companies or positions throughout their working lives. They say that their parents stuck with one job, one company, and one career for the majority of their lives. I wonder if the concept of “life is lived within the transitions” is largely a recent growing phenomena, or if the transitions we experience have changed over the generations. It feels like for my generation, life has fewer constants than before- the quantity of change accelerates every year, just like the quantity of content you see grows with every scroll. I wonder if we are merely reacting to a world that raised us with constant refresh, infinite scroll, Moore’s law, and a lack of understanding of purpose. We don’t know what we’re doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. But everything keeps happening faster and faster than before.

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I’ve been doing this bike thing for several years now, and I’ve wanted to keep everything free to my viewers, because as someone who knew what life looks like when you have to pinch pennies (this was before my fancy tech job), I wanted all my content to be free. But this means working with brands that gift you free products and expect hours of content in return, just for you to tell them that their product actually harmed you, and they say “not my fault”. Or you chase rage-bait to get more views just to end up with a family member yelling at you back, so you end up hating yourself because of it. The cost of creating free content means you chase your dollar elsewhere, and that chase takes you places you often wish you didn’t go.

One main benefit of Patreon, I am learning, is that the people who already want to support you are happy to do so. You don’t have to bargain a fair wage with brands where you have to negotiate up from “free items for free work”. You don’t have to chase clickbait or the algorithm to try and make enough to cover your rent. You can just do what you like, and for those who like you, they can support you even more than just watching your content. They can keep you afloat as you step into your “garden” era which comes with a career transition.

I’m trying to build my garden these days, and I’m not just referring to the community garden I volunteer at in Baltimore. I’m talking about Living By Bike garden as a whole concept: a place for connection, authenticity, adventure and exploration. It’s everything a bicycle represents, but not limited to the physical instrument of moving on two wheels.

My Patreon is not yet public because I’m still working out the kinks of it all to make sure I have an idea of where this is going to go from here. I lead group bikepacking trips, I’d like to release some crochet patterns this year, I talk any/all things about bikes, and I create videos about my adventures to help you go on an adventure of your own. I imagine I’d keep it simple and give early access (and ad free) to all my offerings to my patrons. My greatest trait and biggest flaw is that I painfully love doing stuff- too much of it to fit into all the hours of a single day. But maybe I can keep doing a million things I love and share it with you all if this Patreon idea works out.

If you’ve been with me since I first biked from Atlanta to Baltimore in 2021, or you just joined when I wrote my Substack article “i’d rather be kinda poor than work most jobs”, I’m glad you’re here.

I’m glad we’re all trying something instead of nothing at all.

A snail on some baby bok choy from the community garden.