It was Golden Week recently and I had some PTO, so I took two weeks off to go back to Vietnam. I was a bit worried because Vietnam doesn't have any holidays during this time, and I was scared most of my friends would be working. This meant I'd only see them after 7PM, or on weekends.

While in the taxi, a fun cyanotype workshop popped up on my newsfeed. So I texted my childhood friend to see if she and her sister would be keen. Turned out, the workshop was only available on weekdays and Saturdays, 9AM to 2PM. This is core working hours in corporate.

She texted back: "How about Monday? (tomorrow)"

…

And so we went to the workshop on a random Monday morning (lol).

We sat by the window while the sunlight slowly developed our prints, with Ngọt playing softly in the background. The workshop was supposed to last two hours. We stayed for three.

Crazy. That's already half a workday.

My childhood friend herself couldn't make it. She had a client meeting. She left corporate at the end of last year and just started her own marketing agency. Her sister came with me instead. Also not working for a Vietnamese company; She works remotely for a school in the US, shift hours between 6AM and 3PM Vietnam time. It was a Monday, which meant Sunday in the US. So she was free.

What struck me wasn't just that they were free on a Monday. It was that neither of them answered to a Vietnamese company, a fixed desk, or a 9-to-5 anymore. And they weren't the only exceptions.

Over the two weeks, I kept hearing more. A kohai who quit her CSR Officer position at a Japanese corporation and now works remotely for a Taiwanese company handling visa documents. A friend of a friend who came back from studying in Australia, designed and launched his own board game, and is now teaching chess at the local youth center while traveling to promote Vietnamese chess culture across Southeast Asia. The cyanotype workshop founders themselves were former teachers who left the classroom to open this space.

One by one. Leaving their stable jobs.

And I found myself thinking:

What (the heck) is going on?

Well first we need to unpack - Why are my friends leaving their job in the first place?

Hearing this as a working person in Japan, I was so appalled. "So young people nowadays just don't have resilience? They quit at the first inconvenience."

But then it shifted into something harder to sit with.

Envy.

Because here's the truth I don't say out loud enough: I have never fit in a a corporate person.

I like working at 11PM when the world is quiet. I need a nap after 2PM or my brain flatlines. I want to work from cafes and beaches, not boxy desks where everyone is glued to the same screen pretending to be busy. I have been building my own brand, running coaching sessions, designing workshops, and founding Creaba, all outside of working hours, since basically day one of my corporate life.

That thing, the building, the creating on the side, has been on my mind for five years.

And I'm still choosing corporate. Not because I love it. Not because it's my dream. But because I know what this season is for: building financial stability, learning business acumen, understanding how organizations actually work from the inside. The 5-year visa is a great perk that comes with it.

I think of it like planting a garden. I'm still in the early stages: preparing the soil, putting down the first seeds. I'm not ready to harvest yet. And until that day comes, corporate is where I come to learn.

There's a concept in career studies called the Boundaryless Career, developed by Michael Arthur and Denise Rousseau in the 1990s. The idea is that careers no longer follow a single organization or a linear path upward. Instead, people move fluidly across roles, industries, and structures, driven by personal meaning and adaptability rather than institutional loyalty.

I can see this showing up in many of my friends back home.

My childhood friend running her marketing agency is now building expertise across clients and industries that no single employer could have offered her. My kohai handling visa documents for a Taiwanese company from Vietnam isn't being flaky, she's designing a life where geography and work are no longer in conflict. The board game is an inspiration - he's moving across creative, educational, and cultural structures simultaneously, building something entirely his own.

They are not giving up on their career. They're navigating them in their different ways.

But social media has flattened all of this into one story: the dramatic "I quit my 9-to-5 and never looked back" reel, the founder origin story that skips straight from "I was miserable in corporate" to "now I'm living my dream." It has taken something genuinely complex, people figuring out what work means to them — and turned it into aesthetic. And in doing so, it has erased the part that actually matters. What comes after. And why people really left.

Not everyone who left is thriving. Some of my friends don't make more money than before. Some don't have health insurance. Some are still figuring out how to get their first client, or how to stay motivated without a team around them. They just don't post about that part.

Leaving is not bravery. And staying is not a failure.

So am I the loser for staying in corporate while everyone around me is leaving?

I think that's the wrong question.

We should be asking: “Do you actually know why you're making the choice you're making?”

Because some people needed to leave to find out. And some people, like me, are still tending their garden from the inside. Neither is more courageous than the other. Neither is more right.

What kind of tending does my garden need right now?