“Welcome to the slow lane.”
This was a message I received from a friend, an ex-colleague who had left before me, on the day I left the only company I had ever worked for. Fourteen years may not seem like a long time, but the bank was where I started my career just two months out of university, and I really didn’t know anything else.
It was a beautiful way to put it, like it wasn’t an end, like I was just about to embark on something new, like others before me had done.
I was 35 years old and on vacation in Budapest when I was suddenly possessed with the idea that it was time to quit. I didn’t plan it well. I had always thought I would keep going nonstop until I was 60. I had, after all, liked—sometimes loved—the job 75% of the time. That I didn’t anymore and that the percentage was dwindling was bothersome. Work for me was that weird hobby. I was the girl who prepared training materials on her honeymoon and drafted project plans while sipping margaritas on the beach. I had carried my work laptop with me to every vacation, including that one.
Was that how burnout felt like? Like I was at the end of my rope? Like I was going to scream if I had to respond to one more email while I was on leave? I dreamed of days not spent in two-and-a-half hours of Manila traffic on my way to the office. My resignation message to my manager stewed in my Drafts folder for a few days, and one morning, while still on vacation, I took a deep breath and clicked on Send. It was done.
It was surprising what I found myself reminiscing about, when I started counting down the days. How, at 21, I’d steal my sister’s clothes to wear to work and slip into my high heels in the washroom on the first floor of our Makati office. How a friend and I would make up our own rules about what was allowed as office attire and then proceed to flout them, like our personal guideline that a skirt wasn’t too short if it went past one’s fingertips. Team-building activities in which we crawled in mud and ate balut (to my delight, as I’m from Pateros and grew up eating it). Work assignments to Hong Kong, Singapore, Costa Rica, New York. The friendships I’d built over the years.
But I didn’t want to overstay. I wanted to leave while I was still smiling, before it felt like an obligation, while I could still look back and say that I had a good time. When my last day at work rolled in, all that was left for me to say was that I had the time of my life.
Identity and insecurity
I had taken for granted how my job granted me a shroud of identity.
I realized this while on a simple errand that I wanted to tick off my to-do list after I’d resigned: to open a deposit account at a local bank. But the seemingly simple questions on the customer information sheet stumped me. Employer, employment address, source of funds, job title, gross monthly income, nature of employment, employment status. All blanks that I could have easily filled a week before.
My pen hovered above the page. Would I be lying if I said I was self-employed? Should I overshare with the account manager that it hadn’t been a week since I quit, that I was in the in-between, that I worked my butt off for fourteen years?
It was as though my identity had been stripped away. I wanted to kick myself for not doing all this before I was fully unemployed. I finally ticked “housewife.”
In earlier years, when I was asked for plans after college, “flight attendant” was my immediate response. It was a question that demanded an answer. I was tired of floundering, and so I decided on one and stuck to it.
“Business” was my vague refrain when asked for plans after my corporate career. Once again, I felt pressured to respond to well-meaning small talk about what was next. What specifically? God’s honest truth was that I didn’t know just yet.
I comforted myself with reminders that I was a responsible person. It was an affliction I couldn’t shake off, guilt copiously coursing through my body at the slightest hint of slacking off. I took comfort in the fact that I was reasonably intelligent, and that when I put my mind to it, life turned out fine.
Life after corporate
Brunch. A boozy one, with former colleagues who were also in the in-between. On a weekday. At the close of the month—our busiest time in the finance department, when we would stay overnight at the office racing against time to put in our adjustments before the systems closed.
In that space, for the time being, we could be irresponsible and careless and free. There were a thousand and one things to catch up on, life stories and how everyone’s pursuit of happiness was coming along. One’s return from Hong Kong and ensuing love story. Another’s upcoming comeback to corporate. How one’s daughter was a step away from college. We talked about the humbling aspects of unemployment, things like the new challenge of obtaining approval on visa applications, or even a straightforward answer to the question “What do you do?”
In the embrace of easy camaraderie, brunch extended to dessert and coffee to late merienda, and before we knew it, the sky was darkening, it was 6 p.m. We had stayed far longer than we had planned.
Before I quit, I’d spent many lazy weekends just splayed out on the couch, seeking refuge from stress in activities that didn’t require too much of me, like watching TV or solving a crossword puzzle. I did my best, but I’d be perpetually distracted, as though there was a part of my brain dedicated to work that I couldn’t shut off, not unlike a smartphone app that continues to run in the background. Some time after Sunday lunch, my heart would speed up and my blood would run cold at the thought that the weekend was running out. I’d try to quell that nagging feeling that I should have done something to tick off an item or two on my to-do list for work. By the time the sun set, I’d be in a flat-out panic and my stomach in knots at where the weekend had gone.
The Saturday of my first day of corporate retirement, I arranged some flowers in a vase. I had my nails done, and the family and I sat around the dining table for hours, exchanging stories. There was a feeling like I had all the time in the world. That I was here, present, and alive.
Navigating uncertainty
By the time Monday rolled around after my first weekend of being unemployed, I was a goner. I was at ease with routines and timetables, with rules and coloring within the lines. So naturally, one of the first things I did after quitting was to calm my nerves by creating a schedule.
I actually typed an hourly schedule in my phone the same day I first considered leaving my job, trying to create a picture of daily life beyond my office desk.
I cried five days into my self-imposed retirement. I had been updating my husband at the time about my research on a business opportunity, and he advised me to take the week off. I thought he would be happy that I was so industrious, I blubbered. I was afraid of inertia, scared that if I stopped for too long, I would never start again. It was why I started working two months after graduation.
“Oh no, I don’t like the poor you!” my sister laughingly joked as I made faces at her suggestion that I join her on her NYC and DC trip, on the heels of my resignation. I could practically feel the proverbial belt tightening at the thought of losing my very reliable paycheck.
The monthly paycheck is the worst addiction in the world, a friend once told me sagely.
I surprised even myself at my self-control by not shopping at all in Europe, after I quit. I realized that though I was learning to be more careful with my money, I was still not very thrifty. I thought it would be a good lesson for me, learning to have less again.
You’re being a cheapskate again, my college friend once called out from our hangout back when we were still in school. Her tone was teasing and friendly, but I paused in my tracks, shocked and a little bit offended. It took me a second before I could shrug it off and laugh.
I’ve always known to live within my means. My ₱200-a-day allowance was more than enough for lunch, pamasahe, and miscellaneous school items, but it was up to me to make do if I wanted anything more. If I scrimped and bought my favorite ₱10 piping hot monay with cheese for lunch, I could save enough for a top from the tiangge, the ukay-ukay, or the department store. My Nokia 5110 was inherited from my sister and held together by scotch tape.
Over the years, as my income grew, so did my spending. My younger self would never have condoned my daily Starbucks habit, and I would have balked at that fancy brunch in Hong Kong that cost more than my tuition for a semester.
So what then, after quitting? I cancelled all subscriptions, halted all shopping, and downgraded to Maybelline. I was back, in all my cheapskate glory.
Embracing it
I spent a month adjusting to life in the slow lane, away from demands, deadlines, and the long commute. A month of meeting up with friends long forgotten, listening to new stories and sage advice. Exchanging recipes, watching movies at the cinema during office hours, drinking with friends on a weeknight. Meal planning, grocery shopping, entertaining at home. Cooking lasagna, roasting a chicken, making hummus. Selling the leftovers of my old life piece by piece on Carousell, shipping my office clothes off in parcels to their new owners. Quietly celebrating anxiety-free Sundays. And writing more than I had in a very, very long while.
The slow lane, it turned out, wasn’t as easy-breezy as I had thought. It was marked with another kind of apprehension as I questioned what I wanted to do with myself. As I navigated this new chapter, I realized that I needed to learn to do things differently, at a different pace, and with different priorities. That I needed to learn to be at peace with not being efficient, productive, and perpetually in motion.
I would, in four years, eventually return to corporate life, and I would time and again remind myself of the lessons that life in the slow lane taught me. That my identity isn’t tied to the company. That I’m allowed to fully disconnect from work. That my worth isn’t measured by the number of tick marks on my never-ending to-do list. And, perhaps most importantly, that sometimes the most meaningful moments in life happen not in the fast lane, but when we allow ourselves to simply be present in the slow one. CS
Buona Raya Vilar is currently based in Singapore and is completing a master’s degree in creative writing at the University of the Philippines. Her personal essays can be found at buonaraya.substack.com.
