| Hi Tony,
THEM: Why go to Europe for concerts when you have them in the US?
US: It is our 15th wedding anniversary today! We’ve saved and invested for a decade to enjoy our first summer of retirement as ARMY together 🫶
P.S. The US is a mess 😅 We prefer being global citizens.
For the past month, AJ and I have been marveling at old architecture. Sitting in cafés. Taking trains to places we’ve never been. Eating pastries. Meeting people. Getting lost. Being curious.
And after working for 25 years, I finally took one month off to do whatever I want.
And I feel guilty.
Productivity guilt is weird.
I got my first job in high school as a tutor at a learning center. In college, I was a server for campus catering.
Since then, I’ve worked retail jobs, corporate jobs, and for the last decade, I’ve run my own businesses.
I’ve been working for 25 years.
And somehow, after all that, I can take one month off and still hear a voice in my head asking:
Shouldn’t you be working?
I feel guilty that I’m letting my curiosity guide my days instead of capitalism.
And I’m realizing that guilt is not entirely mine.
It comes from a system that trained so many of us to believe that if we are not a cog in its wheel, something must be wrong with us, not the system.
That our value is connected to our productivity.
That our identity is connected to our income.
That rest must be earned.
That curiosity is a luxury.
That a life is only valuable if it can somehow be monetized.
I’ve been visiting museums in cities where these ideas about work, wealth, class, power, and identity have been evolving for centuries.
And I keep thinking about how deeply identity and income have become intertwined.
When someone asks, “What do you do?” we usually answer with how we make money.
But what happens when you stop working?
Who are you when you’re not trying to earn more?
Who are you when your calendar is not full?
Who are you when you let yourself be a human who simply enjoys community, learning, music, art, food, travel, and time with the people you love?
Shouldn't that make you enough?
I spent years learning how to make money.
Then I spent years learning how to save it.
Then I learned how to invest it.
And eventually, all of that gave me something I wanted even more than money:
The freedom to ask myself what I actually want my life to look like.
For our 15th wedding anniversary.
For our first summer of retirement.
For the freedom to follow BTS around Europe because it brings us joy.
For conversations with strangers.
For the ability to wake up and ask, “What are we curious about today?”
I don’t know if I’ll ever feel a completely clear delineation between making money and making a life.
Maybe after 25 years of working, that conditioning doesn’t disappear in a month.
But I’m starting to understand something:
Financial freedom was never supposed to be the finish line.
It is supposed to give me more freedom to live.
And right now, this exploration is teaching me a lot about who I am when I’m not working.
And even more about who I still want to become.
Respond back with the answer to below (I read every email myself):
If you didn’t have to prove your productivity to anyone, what would you want to do with your time?
Not what would look impressive.
What would make you feel more alive?
P.S. If you’ve been following my work for a while but have never attended one of my workshops, this next workshop is for you. For $47, come spend 90 minutes with me, learn the money strategies that helped me create more freedom in my own life, and leave with practical ideas you can start using right away. Not a BTS fan? That's OK, you'll still enjoy it I PROMISE! |
