Approximately 12 years ago, I hit a career wall and decided to quit my job and move to Hawaii. I chose the Big Island because it was remote, rural and the opposite of living in the big city like Los Angeles. I was going to chuck in the practice of law and open a coffee shop. Maybe. Or run a coffee cart. Or, I was just going to snorkel and swim with whales and dolphins and stare at the ocean.
I did most of that. The moving to Hawaii, swimming with whales and dolphins and staring at the ocean part at least — never did get to the coffee shop and coffee cart. Within a couple of months of moving to Hawaii, I realized that the practice of law was not something I was ready to chuck in, I was mostly burned out and needed a break, and that primarily it was just where I had been practicing that was the problem. I sat for the Hawaii bar and became a Hawaii licensed attorney as well as a California one. A couple of clients kept hiring me for projects from Hawaii. It was great. I spent two years working from wherever, part-time, including a memorable trip to Central America with my high school friend Paige who was writing for Lonely Planet at the time. My law practice was wherever my cell phone and laptop were. I was newly single and traveling around the world.
About two years into this semi-retirement, an opportunity of a career opened up and I was offered an in-house position at USC that I could not turn down. My close friend and mentor who was working at USC said she could really use my skills and needed me and that sealed the deal. But I knew my wings were getting clipped. The job was full-time, which was not ideal, in so far as I wasn’t quite ready to leave semi-retirement, and I knew that I would eventually chafe and need another break from the full-time, work-in-one-country job. I never thought it would last 10 years, but it did! An amazing 10-year run, but last year I started hitting that wall. I was burning out again. I could feel it. This February, I was ill for a few weeks and knew that for my mental and physical health, it was time to reprise the semi-retirement. But this time, instead of quitting my job and moving to Hawaii…I quit my job and moved to Japan! Just for the summer. Of course, as you already know, we stopped in Hawaii first for the birthday celebration of our friends Len and Sue, Hawaii 5-0. For version 2.0 of quitting my job and moving further west (“go west, burned out lawyer”) I had the great fortune of having an adventurous husband and kids along for the family — Axelrod — adventures. These adventures you are reading about now.
First stop out of the U.S, our happiest place on earth, Tokyo DisneySea!
