July 2nd, 2025 marked exactly 35 years since I landed in San Francisco airport and embarked on my life journey in the US. Back then I was a fresh high school graduate. These 35 years represent my entire adult life to-date—from attending college, getting married, to family and career.
It is these years in the US (particularly earlier on) that I learned who to be and how to be an adult. My identity, personal values and principles were rediscovered and reshaped from my childhood upbringing. Family value and work ethics were two things that stayed and strengthened from what I was impressed upon growing up; but my worldview, values, inspirations and all were heavily influenced by and cultivated in my American family and the surrounding societal and cultural environments in the last 35 years. For example, 35 years ago, the college-bound young me had a cynical worldview (not uncommon for my generation from China at the time)—this cynicism had been replaced by a much more constructive attitude, thanks to those early influential years when I started living in the US. (Unfortunately there’s a lot of cynicism in the current climate and it pains me to watch our next generation growing up under this influence.) To all my family members, friends, mentors, colleagues and acquaintances—I am grateful for our shared experiences, your advice and support, brief or long-lasting, in the past 35 years.
Taking stock of the first half of my adult life, I can happily say that I fulfilled my American dream I had started with. Yet there’re so many things I wish to do that I had not given myself permission to, because they would take time and resources away from my steady pursuit of my main goals or might introduce too much risk—
- I hadn’t contributed or paid forward as much as I wish I had.
- I hadn’t tried to be my own boss.
- I hadn’t tried my hands in all the things that intrigued me.
- I hadn’t traveled to all the places I wanted to visit and experience.
Even between my two main priorities (family and career), I often had to make trade-offs. I wish I had as many shared memories with my kids when they were growing up as my husband does. I wish I could be more emotionally there for my mom after my dad passed.
For what I have achieved, I must also reflect on what I made to work vs. what worked naturally for me and my preferences, as I look forward to the next phase of my life—
- I produce my best work when I can “marinate” on it over time.
- I value slow, sustained long-term progress on a hard subject over superficial or short-lived quick wins.
- I am bad at multi-tasking, though my job demanded a lot of that and I probably came across as being pretty good at it.
- I’m bad at separating my mindshares between my job at work and my personal life—the former often sucked too much energy out of the latter.
The clock is now ticking. I have a new set of priorities, very different from the first half; while I’m ever more cognizant that my time and energy are now my most precious resources.
Unfortunately, the more I progressed along in my corporate job career, the less control I had on my own time, and the more demanding the constant context switching. So, I ended my corporate career (a month before this anniversary date), as a wrap for my first half; and as a kick-off for my second half, I’m joining my husband and the 10% working population (US) to be self-employed.
With this new-found maximum autonomy, I’m experimenting with and adapting a lifestyle design that will more harmoniously integrate my whole self—my values, interests, strengths as well as limits, while aligning my time and energy to what’s truly important to me in my second half.
This time I don’t have a pre-defined, proven path. I’ll let each step unfold the next, and along the way, enjoy wonder, savor every moment.
Hemi.Zone 