Firstly, I feel too young to be bucketed into mid-life zone. Realistically, you are middle aged at 35 looking around bubbly kids and Gen Z youth. Gone are the days of spending time at PSUs till retirement. The retirement age is actually shrinking, mainly in private sector jobs. While most people mask it by having a start-up/ freelancing / coaching/ moving to a role that you are no longer doing for money. What is the mid-life crisis about- It feels painful to do a job where your heart is not truly in, so my heart is looking elsewhere today. Crisis might be a big word, but I am in reflection mode to see what do I really want to do
Interestingly, our IIM batchmates’ group had conversations around similar lines. Most of them are fed up with office politics, stagnating growth. I hardly see roles for 10+ years of experience, forget 20+ dog years of experience with long work hours in consulting. As teenagers choosing career paths, you hardly have examples of people who have lived these journeys in your circle. Early retirement is still looked down upon. I don’t think most of my batchmates can or will end up working full time till 60. With AI and focus on efficiency, mid management jobs are going to reduce drastically like never before. The dream of becoming a CEO looks far-fetched- it needs not just hard work, but a lot of luck to be in the right place at the right time
I have had multiple instances of being asked or forced to change roles. It feels guilty to focus less on work as a single. While my coworkers keep taking breaks to drop kids, take care of their wives, go on maternity leave for 6 months, it has always been full on work for me, always filling in for others without too much upside to it. When time came to take a step down on work front, I tried hard to find alternates, but couldn’t. I have made peace with my current role where I can focus on health, family time, remote work, limited stress at the cost of pay, which I have convinced myself that it is a good thing
I still want to be employed for 2 main reasons. An idle mind is a devil’s workshop- too much free time is bad, too much of anything actually. Second reason is to get visas- the rejection rates are extremely high for unemployed. I live and work to get enough money for my travels. Having achieved so much in my life so far, it feels worthless to not do anything. Atleast earning contributes to GDP and making India leap ahead. The irony is everyone is made to feel super special till you hit college and jobs. Corporate life makes you realize that you will not reach the moon. The person who scored 70% might end up being your boss someday, since they are best places to take risks, be an entrepreneur or a politician for that matter
I have had multiple such moments of reflection in my career before. With an education loan of 15 lacs 10 years ago, my focus was to pay it off as quickly as possible so that firing has no impact. I threw all the tax saving gyaan of maximizing loan tenure into the drains. The relief on paying it off in first couple of years was amazing. My travels started only after that when savings began trickling in. For the first 4 years, it was annual travel to one destination. Covid brought a pause into this plan for 2-3 years. Once lockdowns were lifted, I felt the urge to travel like never before. You never know how may years are there ahead of you, particularly healthy years. Time, money and health peak at different points in lives, so it is important to balance them out. I no longer cared about saving large pots of money and started travelling 2-3 times per year, the maximum my leaves could allow. What limited it to 3 times
- Planning also takes a lot of time if you want to be in budget
- Your passports are out for visa stamping for so many days in the year
- Business related travel also eats up passport days available
- Peak summer and winters have most places shut apart from tropical countries
- Being vegetarians, we carry our own food. The limit is typically 2-3 weeks of food and beyond that our luggage limits go for a toss (most important)
The Japanese concept of Ikigai is fascinating, but has not been practical for me so far. I love animals, wildlife, nature and travel. As full time jobs, these become heavily NGO based or competition against unorganized offerings. Veena World is one of the successful, scaled up travel operator, but rest are operating only in pockets. Travel is a risky business, prone to disruptions from airline strikes, health scares like Covid, recession and what not. It requires heavily working capital, expertise, partnerships to execute. Maybe, one can start small with niche like Thailand and scale up- a business plan for another day
I did try this side gig of travel blogging and social media presence but failed. Multiple reasons- travel becoming saturated as a niche, not giving full time into it with another job in hand, not having the right customer- segment fit, etc. Some truths I realized as I started on the blogging journey
- I realized most interest in a country comes from people already in that country, rather than people wanting to travel to it- which is quite opposite to what I had imagined
- My blog neither targeted backpackers, not luxury segments. The middle segment actually has no time to plan do a tour on their own. They rather outsource it to someone or take it by the ear and have a relaxed vacation without too much planning
- Faceless blogs have less traction. People want to see who you are. In some pockets they also are intersted in what you wear, what you eat which we did not cover
I now maintain this more as a journal of my travels, so that I can fondly remember where I went, what I did. Even if it helps one person plan better, I would be happy about it!