I Went Against Everything I Stand For

It’s been exactly 2 months since my last day of work.

2 months of choosing where I want to be waking up in, reclaiming my mornings, and sitting with the kind of quiet that used to feel like freedom but lately has been asking me harder questions.

And I feel I owe it to you — or at the very least, to myself — to finally tell you what happened in 2025. The year I did the very thing, the identity of Bel Around The World would never, ever do.

The Bel You Thought You Knew

If you’d met me before 2025, you’d know this version of me well. Carefree. Unanchored. Jumping from one nomadic destination to the next with a suitcase that held my whole life and a spirit that genuinely believed four walls and a desk job were a kind of slow death.

I’d been living that life for 7 years. Running my own business entirely on my own terms, financially stable, creatively fulfilled (most of the time), and freely travelling to places that kept reshaping who I was — the precision of Japan, the unhurried ease of Hawaii, the raw, unfiltered pura vida of Costa Rica. Even living through a pandemic in Latin America — Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, Colombia — sitting with locals in ways most travellers never get to, pet-sitting in towns where gringos rarely wandered. That version of Bel was living her best life, had figured it out, hadn’t she?

So what would provoke her into switching things up?

Why I Did It

The first thing everyone assumed: “Oh, money no enough lah.”

It wasn’t that.

1. Opportunity

And I know from my human design how my opportunity came from my network.

If there’s one thing growing up Singaporean and spending a decade building a global network has taught me, it’s that the right doors don’t announce themselves — they just quietly open, and it’s up to you to notice.

The job found me through my network, almost effortlessly. Part-time. Hybrid. In the psychology space — which, if you didn’t already know, is what I actually graduated in, back when I had no idea what I was going to do with that degree. It was vastly different from a corporate work setting, so that certainly helped with easing me back into the “workforce.”

The role promised autonomy. Real, actual autonomy. Not the performative kind corporate loves to promise in job listings. For someone who’d been her own boss for 7 years, anything less would’ve been a non-starter.

2. I’d Plateaued In Life

But honestly? Beyond all of that — I had plateaued.

My last “proper” job was in 2017. Nearly a decade ago. And in that decade, I’d grown and outgrown myself, lived and shed more versions of myself than I can count. I’d been through stretches of feeling genuinely aimless — new business ideas that sparked brightly and fizzled out, moments of questioning what I was actually good at, periods where the freedom I’d fought so hard for started to feel less like liberation and more like floating with no land in sight.

Maybe you’ve watched that unfold on my feed. The new projects. The pivots. The constant movement. There was a purpose behind all of it — but there was also searching.

I was at a point where it all felt trite, I wasn’t progressing, I wasn’t challenging myself, I had plateaued. 

3. What If I’m Meant For Corporate?

And then there was this quieter, more confronting question I’d started asking myself:
What if I’ve been wrong about corporate all along?

I’d been so certain in my 20s. So sure that structure was a cage and convention was the enemy. But I’m in my 30s now, and I’ve learnt — through relationship detours (like why I started dating a Singaporean again after 10 years), cultural collisions, and years of carving my own path as a solo female traveller from Singapore (where that’s still the road less taken) — that certainty is often just a story we tell ourselves before we’ve lived enough to know better. We’re fluid. We change. And the only way to know how you feel about something is to actually live it.

Sure, my 20s were all about being carefree, young and free, wanting to get at anything and not feeling ready to settle for “good enough.”

Would my 30s be about routine, structure, groundedness, and climbing the career ladder, saving for “a future”? Would the 30-year-old me be tired of the frivolous, unsure nature that I was in my 20s?

I believe everyone has their own unique timelines that they have to go through on their own. Mine was no different, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The messiness that was my 20s brought me to where I am today, where I’m exactly meant to be, even if it’s not any clearer.

I’ve always lived life like it’s full of possibilities, as long as you’re open to them. And so i was open to seeing how I’d feel about working in a structured environment again, especially since the opportunity presented itself. Whether I’d feel even more strongly against it or enjoy being an employee again, only by living it will I know.

The Beginning

Taking on the role felt electric at first. Like signing a new client whose puzzle I genuinely wanted to solve. It was fun and refreshing to be able to take on work that was different to mine on so many levels. For one, it’s a brick-and-mortar physical business. It’s in the YMYL space.

But what I didn’t expect was how much I’d missed the warmth of working with people. In a room. In real time.

That’s something nobody really talks about in the digital nomad world — the loneliness of it. The particular exhaustion of being the sole navigator of your own ship, year after year, with no one around who truly understands what you’re building or why.

I’d tasted something different in 2021 when Selassie joined me in Latin America, and we worked side by side while travelling — and I’d quietly buried how good that felt.

Being back in that environment brought it all flooding back.

And then there was my assistant. Fresh out of school, properly adulting for the first time — telling me, wide-eyed, that she was finally getting her first real paycheck and buying her own laptop. She was asking me the same questions I had wrestled with at her exact crossroads during my own graduation. And something lit up in me while talking with her that I hadn’t felt in a long time.

In some ways, she was already further along than I was, knowing she wanted to pursue a career in psychology/ counselling, whereas even as I’d graduated with a Psychology degree, I was nowhere clear about what I wanted to do with that piece of paper.

I realised I’d been doing a version of this on social media all along — sharing my story to help others walk their own path — but doing it in person, in real time, felt different. More alive.

In retrospect, I know I’ve come full circle in the years prior, where I had to muddle through life, encounter setbacks, detours and painful falls to get to where I am today. And that’s also emboldened me to trust the process even if I may not have all the answers to life yet.

The Beginning Of The End

I’ve never found it easy to fit in with most people. That’s the honest truth of growing up between worlds — raised in Singapore with all its collectivism and quiet expectation, but thinking in ways that felt more Western: direct, open, willing to say the thing in the room no one else will say. You end up belonging fully nowhere, while carrying a little of everywhere. It’s both a gift and a particular kind of loneliness.

Without going into detail publicly (the people who matter know the full story), what unravelled was a slow erosion. Of trust. Of direction. Of a job description that kept quietly shapeshifting until the work I was doing no longer resembled what I’d been hired for.

And then came the feedback that hit differently than I expected:
“The business didn’t grow as much as I’d hoped, despite how much we’ve invested in you.”

The words sat in my chest like a stone. Not because they stung my ego — but because they confirmed what I already sensed. That for all the energy I’d poured in, I was being measured against a target I’d never been properly set up to hit, nor was I equipped with to reach.

I’ve navigated enough in life to know the difference between a fair challenge and an unfair game. This was starting to feel like the latter.

What Truly Mattered

There’s a question that finds you when you’re at the stage of work burnout:

“Would the extra income be worth losing yourself for?”

I sat with that question longer than I probably needed to. Because the answer was obvious almost immediately — and yet I still hesitated. Old habits. The need to be sure. The very Singaporean instinct to endure a little longer before retreating. Yet my reticence did not just rest on this answer.

In many ways, I’m blessed because I have my own thriving blog and other client work, which would continue carrying me forward, unlike many others who depend on their work as their sole income.

But it was more than that.

But here’s what finally moved me: my measure of success at any organisation has never really been about the numbers. It’s always been about the connections I’ve made, the impact I’ve had, the people I’ve left feeling a little more seen. And when I looked honestly at where things stood — when I was spending more energy navigating the relationships than doing the actual work — I had my answer.

What made it clearer was noticing my own body. Dull. Low-energy. Uninspired. Miserable. I was waking up heavy in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. Everything about how I was experiencing when I was at work ran contrary to my values, beliefs, and what I stand for in my personal brand and content.

I was becoming the very person I’d spent years writing about with quiet concern — the one who stays in something misaligned and vents to their inner circle, but doesn’t move. In hindsight, it was so evidently clear how I wasn’t living in alignment with myself at all, which was why I was experiencing so much resistance.

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

Alas… if it isn’t for the money, it was no longer exciting me nor challenging me, I was feeling more stressed about navigating the work relationships than I am doing the work, then truly, what is holding me back from leaving?

Is This It?

I want to be clear: I don’t regret any of it.

I always take positive lessons from any phase in life I’ve gone through, whether that be in a relationship, an encounter with a stranger, or in this case, a work experience.

I came out the other side with something I hadn’t had in years — discipline. Real, practised, structural discipline.

The rhythm of a fixed working schedule has shown me the merit of discipline and its effects on work productivity, and that’s the one thing i want to carry forward as i run my business remotely, while doing it on my own terms.

My old rhythm, if I’m being honest, was: fill my calendar with things I love, then squeeze work into the gaps. It sounds romantic. It also meant work was never truly a priority — and I was coasting more than I admitted to myself.

This past year showed me what’s possible when you commit to showing up consistently, even when you don’t feel like it. The $10k/ $20k income goals I used to daydream about? I hit them. And that proof — that lived, personal proof — changed something in me.

Abundance isn’t just a concept I write about. I’ve seen it materialise in real numbers, in real time, and the past year has indeed proven abundance is not just a wish, it’s plausible, and it’s real, it’s attainable, and no goal is too high for me to aim for, as long as i believe in myself.

I also came home to my team with new eyes. Richard. Edo. The people who’ve shown up for me for over two years without fanfare. Working alongside people who made me feel small made me realise, with a full heart, just how extraordinary it is to have people in your corner who genuinely want you to succeed.

I don’t take that for granted anymore.

Where Does This Leave Us?

I’m back. Fully, completely, unapologetically back to building this on my own terms.

But I’m also different. Quieter in some ways. More certain in others. Carrying a new layer of understanding about what it means to work in misalignment — and how quickly your body and spirit will tell you when something isn’t right, if you’re willing to listen.

If any of this resonates with you — if you’re sitting somewhere in that fog of “I know something needs to change but I don’t know what or how” — I just want you to know that the fog is not permanent. And you don’t have to muddle through it alone.

I’ve been that person. More times than I can count. And if you’d ever find it useful to have someone in your corner who’s truly lived the messy, non-linear, beautifully unconventional version of figuring it out — someone to help you find your own clarity, not hand you someone else’s roadmap — feel free to reach out. No agenda. Just a conversation.

Sometimes that’s all it takes to find the thread again.

To new chapters. To returning to yourself. To the quiet courage it takes to choose differently — even when the world, or your own voice, is telling you to stay put.

— Bel 🌿