Why a 31-Year-Old Yale Grad Gave Up a $95,000 Job to Scoop Ice Cream in the Caribbean
“I wasn’t living in the moment; I was living for some indeterminate moment in the future when I’d saved enough money and vacation days to take a trip somewhere. If you’re constantly thinking you need a vacation, maybe what you really need is a new life.”
“Seeing old colleagues and acquaintances building successful careers can make me second-guess my choices. One of my friends from college started a little website called Pinterest. Another just won an Emmy for a hit television show she created.”
“But I have an island. I live in a charmingly ramshackle one-bedroom apartment on a hillside overlooking the sea […] Perhaps there was something indulgent and Peter Pan-ish about this new lifestyle. But the truth is, I was happier scooping mint chocolate chip for $10 an hour than I was making almost six figures at my previous corporate job.”
“Recently he visited and told me, ‘You had it right all along. I’m toward the end of my life and looking to retire to someplace like this, and now I’m too old to enjoy it.’ “
“Sometimes I think back to the question I used to be asked in job interviews: ‘Where do you see yourself in five years?’ That always seemed a depressing notion, to already know what you’d be doing five years in the future. Lately I’ve been mulling moving somewhere entirely opposite of here… Who knows where I’ll end up? And what a marvelous thing that is — not knowing.”