Starting a New Life

My wife got a new job. So, I'm moving to another country in a few months. I will take this chance to quit my job and focus on creating content full-time. This is a rare chance to start a new life.

But I am not doing this on a whim; here's why.

I've been working as an employee since 2015. In the past 8 years, I've saved enough for me to be able to live without working for 6 months.

And that hit me.

8 years of working 9-to-5. And I can only live work-free for 6 months. With this current rate, to be financially independent and have enough savings for 20 years (until I'm dead), I have to work for another 320 years.

Questioning my life

All this time, I have always thought I'd "made it" when I hit 30: a nice house, some cars, kids, great abs, and a company of my own.

However, it's been a few months since I turned 30, and I still don't have them. That means I must fix my habits, change my routines, and improve my life.

And what never changed is that I have always spent my 9 to 5 sitting in front of my computer, looking at a screen, and hating what I was doing.

Sure, there were some highs when I got promoted or successfully launched a project. But the lows always linger, and in 2023, the lows were too much that my colleagues started to see how unmotivated I was. I can no longer fake it.

I am lucky to have supportive peers who want me to be happier at work. But the irony is, I can't be happy at work. The work is the pain. I'm just there for the money.

This needs to change.

Finding the answer

So I decided during the first 6 months of my move to the new country, I'll do content creation full-time—my plan: Book, Medium, Social Media, Newsletter, & Course.

Book: I recently made a book with some friends, and to my surprise, it was selling well. I am grateful that people enjoy my drawings and want to buy the book. So the next step is to focus on my content and create another book. This time, I will do it on my own.

The book will be a collection of my comic strips, published once every 6 months. I did the groundwork and found that I could publish a 200 pages book every half year or so if I consistently published a weekly comic strip. Hopefully, people will like it as much as the first one. I hope you'll like it too.

Medium: I have published my work on Medium for the longest time. It's the first platform that showed me that people care about my writings – they even paid to read my articles. I have stopped publishing on Medium to focus on my social platforms. But now that I won't have a full-time job, I'll start publishing there more often and, hopefully, gain a stable income from Medium.

Social Media: If you follow me on Instagram, you might have noticed that I finally showed my face in the avatar. All that to obtain a blue checkmark. Now that my face is out and I no longer have to hide it, I think I'll start creating more reel/TikTok content.

Hopefully, by the end of the 6 months, I'll have enough audience to build a sustainable income stream from YouTube and Tiktok. But to be honest, I have no idea how this will go. We'll have to wait and see.

Newsletter & Course: Lastly, I'm grateful to have people like you – who supported my content through the newsletter or the storytelling course.

I want to focus on delivering value to people who care about what I write – people like you – so I removed all the free subscribers and made this newsletter a paid-only newsletter (the paid subscription comes with purchasing the storytelling course).

I'll write more often to special people like you, so I hope you'll enjoy it every time  I arrive in your inbox :)

I have no idea what will happen next. But I'm willing to bet on this 6 months journey of being financially independent.

...At least until I ran out of money.

And then I'll find another job.

But more on that, in 2024.

I hope you find this insightful. And when things get hard, remember:

It's not going to be easy. But it's not impossible.

Your friend,
Brian