I quit my job to travel. here’s why…

Oh my goodness. Did not expect this to happen so soon but it’s happening y’all… I gave in my 2-week notice on November 1st, 2019. My last day EVER in corporate America will be on November 15th and all I can say is I cannot believe I did it. I’ve been working a JOB since I was 16 years old so it’s weird thinking that I’m not going to be committed to physically going into an office ever again.

If you knew me throughout my college career, I used to be obsessed and crazy about landing an internship or a job every single season. No joke. Ask anyone. I was obsessed with building my resume and I worked my butt off to make sure that I was always working up to corporate standards. So the fact that I’ve decided to leave my job still boggles my mind.

>> Feel free to stalk my LinkedIn.

But if anyone needs ANY HELP on resume building, or looking for a job within Marketing or Human Resource Management, reach out to me. I’ve got a ton of referrals, and I’d like to confidently say that I’ve also mastered resume building, landing internships and jobs, and finessing interviews. Throughout my college career, I’m pretty sure I’ve applied to at least 200+ internships freshman to junior year & I’ve applied to another 200+ full time jobs my senior year. I wish I was kidding, but I’m not. It wasn’t even about making money back then, but I was obsessed with learning and wanting to be kept busy all the time.

I’ve been working full-time in corporate for the last 2.5 years and all I can say is how freaking blessed I am to have had the opportunity to work at 3 amazing companies since graduating at Rutgers University in May 2017.

Ever since I was in grade school, I always knew I was going to work within sales & marketing. I’m not sure how or why I knew it, but it just felt it in my gut. When I got into college, I never took a marketing class because the Marketing Major was under the Rutgers Business School, which I got rejected from. So I took the easy way out and double majored in Economics & Human Resource Management with a minor in Labor Studies in order to land me a marketing-like job once I graduated college. And it worked because every single job I got out of college was within sales & marketing.

So now you’re probably wondering why I decided to quit my job if I worked so hard to land them in the first place? There are a couple of reasons why and some that I never thought would have been contributing reasons for…

4 Reasons Why I Decided To Quit My Job

1. I have a dying obsession to travel the world.

If you’ve been following me this past year, I’ve been obsessed with traveling and creating content around travel. I purposely go out of my way to different cities (or NYC every weekend I’m home) just to explore the city, be on the road, and take pictures of as many sunrises and sunsets as I can. I lose sleep to attempt and try to capture the sunrise even though I fail to do so many times. I seriously need to find a good, reliable app that pinpoints optimal areas to capture the sun wherever I am around the globe.

I love love love writing reviews about cities, the best coffee shops, and having the opportunity to shoot with some of the most talented photographers all around the world. I also have an obsession with being one with nature. The pure joy of being around natural landscapes and not around technology all the time gets me and I don’t think I will ever get enough of it.

>> My Photography Journey: From Portable Cameras to my First DSLR, Nikon D3400

>> My Overall Experience: Feen Coffee, Huntington Beach, California

A lot of people ask me why I don’t travel internationally as often and there are a few reasons why I don’t right now. For one, ever since April 2019, I’ve been extremely strict with my time and my expenses. I stopped meeting up with people as I normally would, stopped going out every weekend and started focusing more on building myself. This was probably one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to do because I’ve lost touch with so many people.

Since I’m a total extrovert, it was hard adjusting to a total solitude-type of lifestyle. But I limited myself because I was desperate for my blog to work out. Every time I came from an international trip, I’d pretty much always want a vacation from my trip to adjust to the time difference but end up taking longer breaks from it and would lose my momentum. So I was very strict on not traveling far distances in order to preserve my energy and focus on building up my travel blog in order to showcase destinations, provide tips in countries/cities, and obviously to try to convince others to travel more often.

>> YouTube Video: Why You Should Travel More Often

2. Even Though I LOVED My Job, The Job Itself Was Mentally Taxing

I will be forever grateful for wanting to learn marketing every single day. I am always reading up on what’s new in the industry, listening to marketing podcasts, and testing out marketing content across my social channels. But even though I feed myself a ton of marketing information everyday, that also doesn’t mean that I will excel in all areas of it. Understanding and executing certain areas of marketing is actually very difficult for me, and quite frankly fail at putting it into action.

I have experience in many areas within marketing and at my last job, I focused on Paid Search. I got into paid search because while working at my previous employer, I got heavily into e-commerce on the side. I used to sell on Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) and attempted to build up an Amazon empire for hours outside of work. To put it into perspective, I pretty much focused on FBA just as much time as I currently focus on my blog, today.

But the one thing that I had a really hard time doing was learning how to understand my advertising reports. If you are familiar with the lingo, my ACoS was averaging > 50% and that is absolutely terrible. I was losing money by the day and I just couldn’t understand the anatomy of an ad and how to create successful campaigns that worked. So I told myself that if I could find a full time job that could teach me how to read and understand all I need to know about the advertising world, I would resign in a heartbeat. So I applied to exactly 4 Paid Search positions and I got a call from Education Dynamics while hiking Potato Chip Rock in San Diego. Somehow, I nailed the interview during the hike, went in for an in person interview when I came back, and got an offer shortly afterwards. Thinking back, it’s crazy to think how quickly everything happened, but that’s pretty much how I started off my Paid Search journey!

>> Read More: Full San Diego Checklist

So now I’m in the field that I wanted to be in. But out of all the 15 employers that I’ve ever worked for in my life, this was the first job that I was not excelling in. And it ate me up alive. Not because I was concerned about performing well, but because I wasn’t contributing. I did my absolute best to try to understand the material and went out of my way to find sources that would help me get the “click” (no pun intended). After a few months of doing this, I was running out of ammo, stressing out at work all the time, and I was simply embarrassed to even show up at work because I wasn’t getting it.

When I first started my job, I was my bubbly, confident self and was totally certain that I was able to get over this hurdle. But after 5, 6, 7 months passed where I ‘should have gotten it by now’, I just wasn’t. And I was so embarrassed that I stopped talking and cracking jokes as much and I started living in my head. I was getting mentally taxed by the day because I was simply not getting better.

On top of the 7+ hours I contribute to my blog outside of work, I was stressing my mind and body to the absolute max. I used to have such clear skin, but I started breaking out like no other, it was getting really hard for me to digest my food, and I was losing sleep every single day. I was so desperate to be good at Paid Search that I was constantly reading articles and watching YouTube vides online, I would go into the office on the weekends to work additional hours to get Google Ads Certified, took a Digital Marketing Course at Noble Desktop in New York City over the course of five weeks and couch surfed at my friends’ in the city, and I even reached out to Paid Search experts to learn from them when visiting Austin, Texas. And even though I did all this to be mildly good at Paid Search, I just wasn’t getting it and meeting expectations. So after realizing that paid search was just not the right fit for me, I decided that I needed to call it quits. I was trying to force myself to be good at something that I wasn’t. So after taking a lot time thinking about it, I decided to let it go. I realized that I needed to focus my energy on something that I could excel at and gave in my two week notice on November 1st, 2019.

It sucks because I love my team so much. We get along so well and I’m going to miss the ridiculous conversations we have about the weirdest things ever. I’m going to miss Jason trolling me that there was a ghost hacking into my computer for weeks. I’m going to miss hearing Krysti munch on chips at 9AM in the morning and drink her 5th cup of tea by noon. I’m going to miss Christina’s delicious cooking and hospitality in and out of work. I’m going to miss Teresa’s random stories about Chinese gangs and hearing her speak Korean better than I ever can. I’m going to miss Yichen’s poop stories and her heart for creating the best team that I’ve ever had the pleasure of being a part of. And even though I’m not going to physically be there anymore, I promise I’ll always be there in spirit. Love you guys so much, thank you for putting the cherry on top of my best and last corporate experience.

At Education Dynamics, I’ve learned more about Paid Search, building campaigns, website design and daily optimizations more than I possibly could have ever imagined. I wholeheartedly value all the time, energy and effort my boss put into me during my time there. And when I say hours, I literally mean hours. My boss was and still is the best boss I could have ever asked for. I learned Paid Search from the top of the best and if you want to pursue a Paid Search job, seriously let me know. I’m not even trying to be biased but I would not have wanted to learn Paid Search from anyone else. She breaks down advertising in the most simplest forms and provides the best examples on the spot, sometimes I wonder why she isn’t making courses and teaching people online. But if your company is looking into hiring someone to run ads for you, this lady right here is wicked and will make you more money than you can ever imagine.

3. I was desperate to buy time

We all want more time and there never is enough hours in a day, right? I mean, as long as you’re making the right sacrifices in order to get what’s important to you done, you will always find time. Promise. And this is why I sacrificed my social life. I was so desperate to buy time. But the more and more personal projects I had to get done across my social channels, my work load started getting heavy and extremely backed up. To put it into perspective, my work is really backed up to the point where I still need to edit videos from where my hair was black. That was almost 3 months ago.

Because I was so desperate to find time, I was averaging 5 hours of sleep per day (even on the weekends), working on my side hustles for about an hour of my commute to and from work, and working the hour throughout lunch. Hence why I never ate with my team. I was desperate. And even though I don’t monetize on my blog at the moment, I’m obsessed with sharing. And I know and trust myself that if I have the luxury of contributing the additional 12 hours that I put into my 9-5 desk job across my social channels, monetizing on my blog might come sooner than I think.

I hit my end of the year financial savings goal 2 weeks ago, so I guess timing oddly happened right. So now, how am I going to be financially supporting myself in the meantime? I have no idea, but I am looking across many creative outlets to make money… so if anyone has any suggestions, please leave a comment below or personally message me. Any additional help would be much appreciated!

Last but not least…

4. I finally got over my insecurities and the false lies living deep within me

If you’ve been following my travel journey this past year, I sincerely want to thank you for keeping up with me. I mean it in my heart. Depending on the current situation in my life, my posts and messages have been ranging from happy go-lucky me to depressing ass posts. So if you’ve kept up with me, I genuinely appreciate you so much because I even get annoyed trying to keep up with myself.

But the reason why I got into sharing as much as I currently do is because I needed an outlet to express my inner emotions and feelings. I was going through my first and hopefully last breakup and the biggest heartache of my life. I was desperate to find an outlet to liberate my thoughts since I’ve never felt my heart try to kill me alive so badly in my life. And even though I had full support of my friends and family, I shut down single everyday for a solid month. That’s a lot of time. The breakup happened exactly a year ago and it sucked because it was around the holiday season. Everyone was busy spending time with family and I didn’t really want to socialize with anyone. 2019 was the first year I’ve ever stayed at home during New Years and was still trying to figure out how to handle my emotions. I still remember trucking down to Starbucks on Christmas Day because I had so much on my mind to write and share about.

>> Instagram Post: Willingly Working on Christmas Day

But the more and more I kept on writing and sharing, the more I realized how much fun it was. Having the ability to share my larger message with the world and reaching people I never thought was within my capacity pushed me harder than I’ve ever pushed before. People started reaching out to me from countries I’ve never even heard of thanking me for the value they’ve received from my posts. Friends I thought I was never going to talk to ever again started reaching out to me telling me how much they respect my hustle and how much I make them want to travel more often. And the more and more I realized how many hearts I was capable of touching, I was getting hooked.

The fact that I am now able to reach over 7500+ people in this world boggles my mind. I’m not one to brag either, but 5000+ followers on Instagram; 2000+ friends on Facebook; 250+ subscribers on YouTube; 250+ followers on Twitter, and all the traffic that comes onto my site from organic search.

Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | LinkedIn | Pinterest

So where do the insecurities come into play?

If you’ve noticed the pattern, I write based off emotion, which can be a good or a bad thing. I haven’t taken a writing class since I was 19 years old, which isn’t necessary, but never thought I was good at writing. I spill whatever’s on my mind, structure it into a post, and share it. And although I’m constantly learning about copywriting and alternative writing structures, I was never confident enough to believe that I could monetize and make a living from my writing abilities. I genuinely never thought I was good enough to even reach out to companies to write blog posts for them in exchange for monetary value. And even though the reason why I write is not for money, that is what will allow me to survive traveling the world.

I didn’t realize my deep, hidden insecurities in me until my friends yanked it out of me during our last night out in Austin, Texas. Brian, Eric and Fonz, I give it to you guys. Thank you guys for pulling and destroying the deepest, darkest lie living within me. Thank you guys for encouraging me to move on beyond my past and supporting me to continue to pursue my passions. Thank you guys for roasting and continuously encouraging me to shine and to never forget my why, no matter what the circumstance may be.

And although I don’t have a backbone or any type of reliance of constant financial income coming in, for some reason I’m not anxious about it. It’s a bit odd, but maybe it will hit me later on. I don’t plan on pulling out of my savings for a few months, so we’ll see how long this goes. However, all I do know is that God that is by my side and He will and has continuously been protecting me throughout my walk.

Some of you guys have been asking me how you can support. Reading my blog posts and watching my YouTube Videos is more support than I could ever ask for. Alternatively, I’m a bit guilty of doing this, but I created a Go-Fund-Me page if you feel like financially supporting someone like me. I know money is a sensitive topic and is tight for a lot of you guys, so I do appreciate all the support from the bottom of my heart. Keep in mind that Go Fund Me take 2.9% of the total transaction and $0.30 per donation as well, so Venmo works too.

>> Support Me Through Go Fund Me: Start Of A New Life: I Quit My Life To Travel

>> Venmo: @gracefkim

So… What’s Next?

Now that I’m realizing that I have all the time in the world to work on my passion projects, I am mentally preparing myself to work more than I did at my 9-5 job. On the weekends, I’ll usually go to a coffee shop and work from 10AM – closing (that’s anywhere between 9PM – 10PM). So that’s already a 12 hour work day for me to catch up on all the blog posts and videos that I’ve been meaning to work on. Remember when I was talking about being desperate to buy time? I found it!

So if I’m consistent with my work and focus on completing at least one task per day, I should be able to catch up with my backlog in about 2-3 weeks. And since there is still so much content I want to grab from New Jersey & New York, I’m sure that I’ll be good with keeping myself busy till the end of the year. And of course, if I find any cheap flights in the world, I’ll purchase them in a heartbeat.

Obviously working up to this goal, I want to find ways to rack up as many points as I can to use towards travel, so if anyone is gracious enough to share their strategies, please leave a comment below or personally message me. Appreciate all the help.

Where’s My Next Destination?

Interestingly enough, I have been meeting so many people online or at conferences that live in the Bay Area. I’ve been to SoCal a bunch of times, but never to the Bay. A lot of my friends moved up there this year and I have some family there too, so I’m thinking of buying a one way ticket so San Francisco, bringing my passport along with me (just in case I want to go international), and couch surf for as long as they let me.

Social media raves about Los Angeles and San Francisco all the time, but there is so much more to do outside of the city, which I am dying to do. The amount of national parks and photography spots that I’m trying to go to makes me believe that I can camp out in cars for a solid month. I’m just ready to explore, so IF ANYONE FROM THE BAY AREA IS DOWN TO DO ROAD TRIPS ON THE WEST COAST, PLEASE LET ME KNOW! I’m dying to catch sunrises and sunsets behind beautiful mountains and experience 100 degrees weather out in the desert.

I love you guys.

All in all, I can’t thank you guys enough for keeping up with me across my social media journey this past year. It’s been a solid year of producing content and building up my biggest asset, my blog. Looking back, I noticed that I bought my domain off of GoDaddy.com on October 17, 2018 & officially transferred over my site from SquareSpace.com over to WordPress.com on March 11th, 2019. Crazy seeing how quickly time flies. I honestly cannot thank you guys enough. You guys drive and push me to want to create more every single day. I owe it to you all.

Biggest thank you to my loving and supporting family

I want to give the biggest shoutout to my family. For the longest time, my parent’s never knew why I set my alarm at 7AM and was working even harder on the weekends. They noticed that I stopped going out and started coming home at ridiculous hours during the work week. They started getting suspicious when I started breaking out so much. So after telling them how much time I choose to work on building up my social channels, they stopped questioning me so much and started letting me do. And just a few weeks ago, my heart melted because my mom told me that she ran out of hearts and thumbs up signs to give on my YouTube Videos. Don’t worry mom, I’m in the works of making more videos so that you can give me more!

So after my parents noticed how hard I was working for months, I finally told them that I wanted to drop everything and travel full time. What shocked me was that they were not totally opposed to it, which initially freaked me out. Knowing my mom, she would’ve opposed this idea for my life. But because I proved to my parents how hard I’ve work to pursue my passion projects every single day, they’ve gained my trust. It’s a blessing because my mom straight up told me that she’s not worried about me at all because she has me covered in her prayers, and my dad told me that whatever happens to me out in the wild that I can always fall back on home in Jersey.

This is all I’ve ever wanted. Full support from my parents. I have never wanted to work so hard for someone else. I owe it all to you guys. Thank you, I love you both so much.

As for my siblings…

• Unnie, thank you for always listening to my rants, correcting and teaching me concepts, and putting things into perspective. You are the best older sister I could’ve ever asked for. You think I’m a hustler? My big sis hustles harder (and more efficiently) than me, and is the definition of a go-getter. Thank you for all your love and support, keeping me sane, and being the voice and ears I’ve always been searching for.
• Isaac, I’m so so proud of you for stepping out of your old, lazy habits that used to drive me insane. I’m so happy that you set yourself financial goals, bought yourself a Sony A7ii (before me) from the money you saved up working at FlyNyon because you wanted to get into automotive photography. I’m so proud of you for being on the route of finishing up school a semester early to start your post college life earlier than others. Not a lot of people can do that your age.
• Isaiah, I’m so relieved that you started undergrad and are slowly starting to find yourself in school. You really needed to leave the house. I laughed so hard when you called me your first week of school asking if you should buy silver or black earrings. You rebel. There’s a lot that you are going to learn in college, so just do me a favor and always be open minded. You got more talent in you than you think. Just stop trying to be so logical all the time because it’s so annoying. But I still think black looks better on you.

Annie, to my favorite cousin in the entire world, I don’t know how to express how grateful I am to have you in my life and the pleasure of calling you my blood. You have been my constant throughout it all. You honestly keep me sane, and you always know the right things to say when I need to hear it. I’m also so proud of you for getting so far and have embarked your real estate career. You’re already killing the game, and I can’t wait to see you in the Top 100 Forbes Women soon.

Moving Onward!

I can’t believe you made it this far. You’re crazy because this post might as well have been published as a book! But if you did, I honestly thank you for listening to my why. You are a trooper.

Now, I hope you understand all my reasonings as to why I decided to quit my job. I hope you got something out of this post and that I’ve inspired you to do something new and different with your life. I also want to remind you that you are beautifully and wonderfully made and that you have crazy talent living deep within you. You just got to do a little bit of soul searching and break out of your comfort zone to let your creativity shine. I support your journey and decision in whatever you do, as long as you know in your gut that you’ve made the right choice.

And if I’ve convinced you to travel a little bit more often, you’ve made me the happiest girl in the world. Because remember that you only have…

ONE LIFE. ONE WORLD.

Happy traveling, y’all~

Love,

Grace Kim

@gracefkim