Bidding for vacation time each year, dealing with employees calling you at all hours, working from a desk, wishing you got paid more or had more friends?
Guess what, taking up a new career as a programmer isn't going to solve your career aspiration problems overnight. Nor will the next Tony Robbins event instantly make you fearless and rich. And sadly, doing 100 crunches once a year will never give you a sexy six pack.
That's right, this is a tough love message.
Some people turn to me and say they want to do what I do. I lived in Costa Rica in a beach town last winter and performed my programming job remotely. What sounds like an amazing trip of surfing, jungles, and hiking would probably have driven most people mad. Sometimes I would go weeks without having a conversation with people external to my life due to a language barrier. It started raining at around 2pm every damn day. At week 2 of my trip I had bought out all of the Alfredo sauce in the entire town which was never restocked for the rest of my trip; they only had red sauce. Rental vehicles were expensive and uneconomical to have for more than a few days at a time. Traffic was awful on the weekends. And sometimes when it rained the power would go out.
Running from your problems never fixes anything. Instead you just get different problems. Maybe you don't like the people where you live, so you move to Costa Rica. Now you can't talk to anyone because no one speaks english. Once those rose colored glasses come off and your "vacation" ends, you are just left with new problems.
But you know what, I enjoyed those problems. In fact I'm writing this from an Airbnb in Costa Rica; I returned because I enjoyed it so much. I learned to wake up earlier to take advantage of the drier part of the days. I got better at my Spanish and learned to cook local cuisines. I got better at planning weekend trips to avoid traffic and lower my expenses. And as for the power outages, turns out if you drop out of a zoom meeting you'll still have your job tomorrow.
Don't run from your problems, decide which problems you are ok with and that make you happy when you solve them. Build your life around those problems because they are not going away, they just become good problems to have.
Guess what, taking up a new career as a programmer isn't going to solve your career aspiration problems overnight. Nor will the next Tony Robbins event instantly make you fearless and rich. And sadly, doing 100 crunches once a year will never give you a sexy six pack.
That's right, this is a tough love message.
Some people turn to me and say they want to do what I do. I lived in Costa Rica in a beach town last winter and performed my programming job remotely. What sounds like an amazing trip of surfing, jungles, and hiking would probably have driven most people mad. Sometimes I would go weeks without having a conversation with people external to my life due to a language barrier. It started raining at around 2pm every damn day. At week 2 of my trip I had bought out all of the Alfredo sauce in the entire town which was never restocked for the rest of my trip; they only had red sauce. Rental vehicles were expensive and uneconomical to have for more than a few days at a time. Traffic was awful on the weekends. And sometimes when it rained the power would go out.
Running from your problems never fixes anything. Instead you just get different problems. Maybe you don't like the people where you live, so you move to Costa Rica. Now you can't talk to anyone because no one speaks english. Once those rose colored glasses come off and your "vacation" ends, you are just left with new problems.
But you know what, I enjoyed those problems. In fact I'm writing this from an Airbnb in Costa Rica; I returned because I enjoyed it so much. I learned to wake up earlier to take advantage of the drier part of the days. I got better at my Spanish and learned to cook local cuisines. I got better at planning weekend trips to avoid traffic and lower my expenses. And as for the power outages, turns out if you drop out of a zoom meeting you'll still have your job tomorrow.
Don't run from your problems, decide which problems you are ok with and that make you happy when you solve them. Build your life around those problems because they are not going away, they just become good problems to have.