Why I started writing on Substack and my big decision this year

Review of my self-created "4 year Global Degree" plan from 2021

I started writing Substack in January this year because I had a feeling this was going to be a year of change, big ones.

I have been thinking if it was time to go home, and by home, I mean Taipei.

I have by now been living in the US for almost 4 years, the first in San Francisco and the rest in New York. I always knew I’d go back to Taiwan but it was just a matter of when.

Once I started thinking more seriously about it, the process of decision-making made me restless. I signed up for life coaching, talked to every friend with a lending ear, scribbled pages after pages into my notebooks and stayed up late with my thoughts going in circles.

But only I could make this decision for myself, so I waited for it to feel right.

I spent a few weeks longer in Taiwan than usual and just allowed myself to take in the streets without rushing to another place. I had missed the familiarity and comfort, feeling safe and welcomed, and mostly the closeness to family. By the end of the trip, the decision felt a little more certain but I still wasn’t sure.

Then I waited to return to New York, I wanted to know if I was ready to say good-bye to this city I also love. So I allowed a few more weeks for my thoughts to settle and gaze out at the New York skyline from Brooklyn. I got back into routine, going to hot yoga at CorePower, shopping produce at Trader Joe’s and browsing at my favorite vintage shops.

But after a few weeks in New York, I didn’t feel any more certain about the decision, if I were to put a number on it, it would be around 80%. Then I started to think maybe this is just how decisions are suppose to be made, you can never be 100% sure so you just have to make your best bet.

And there will never really be a good time to leave New York. Spring was just around the corner and soon it would be summer then fall, every season with its own charm —only perhaps the dreading winter could make me leave but even then I could find an excuse to stay for the Christmas lights.

Yet, New York will always be here.

So only I could decide when is enough. Have I achieved the goals I had set out for myself 4 years ago when I landed in the San Francisco Airport? If so, am I ready to say good-bye?

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In 2021, I created a “4 Year Global Degree” plan, I remember distinctively typing it out on the plane, with my bright laptop screen shining through the dimmed cabin lights, drafting up my grand life plans on Pages. Here it is, unedited.

Vision

Learning can happen outside of the classroom and anywhere in the world, with abundant of resources around you, the world can be your teacher. However, it takes clear intensions and goals to achieve scope and depth in fulfilling your curiosity and building perspectives on the world around you.

To be clear, this wasn’t for anyone else to read it was truly my own plan for myself.

Then I wrote a list of Limitations just to be realistic. Like “Learning while earning an income and be able to support my living cost.”

After that I created high level Intentions followed by specific Focus areas.

Intentions & Focus

“To build professional skills” #Capable: Develop skills in data analytics, coding and strategy planning; high income and savings

“To gain appreciation for the arts & music” #Sophisticated: Learn art history, architecture, interior design, water painting, pottery; music theory, vocalist, piano (sing and play); classics in literature and media

“To see the world and explore the unknown” #Curious: Connect to nature, camp on national parks, cycle the west coast, travel to Europe and South America

“To build a global community beyond the immediate circles” #Humble: Connect to people with different background, stay humble and build intentional and long-lasting relationships

“To become a fuller person with own interests, conscious self-care routines and pleasurable way of living” #Fulfilled: Find your spirituality, read and discuss intellectual topics, be able to cook healthy food and understand the land and food sources, give back to the community or be involved

Lastly was a specific action plan with a quarterly timeline and it looked something like this, spanning from 2021 Q4 to 2025.

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Of course nothing in life goes as planned and I had put this plan away for a few years until last summer. But when I started going through the list of intentions one by one, I realized it had been guiding my decisions all this time.

So since January, I’ve been capturing the “results” of my plans on Substack as my story-based report card.

In The pivots that have informed my career choices, I talk about how working in US has opened my eyes, “I learned how to work with people not just of different cultural background but different subject expertise — sellers, account managers, data scientists, product managers and even engineers. I saw how commercial teams negotiated contracts, how operation teams managed metrics and how product teams thought through new solutions.”

I actually plan to write more about how working at Uber has taught me to work efficiently, prioritize and get things done. But for now, this box feels checked off.

I was very ambitious here, I’d say “Learn art history, architecture, interior design” can be crossed off and the rest may need to wait until retirement.

From traveling, I picked up an interest in architecture and began writing city walking guides. Rosie's New York SOHO Architecture Guide was a first attempt, Rosie's Taipei Architecture Walking Guide was really for myself to learn more about Taiwan’s complex colonial history and last week I published another from my neighborhood walk in Upper East side Rosie’s architecture guide to mini Paris of New York.

I have spent the last two summers in Europe and made my debut trip to Argentina last month. From my travels, I’ve written Solo traveling Europe and making friends with strangers and Cycling South of France to cleanse my soul. Given how much time I spent in Paris, I even churned out Rosie's Second-time-in-Paris Guide.

There’s so much more to see but I’m happy with what I have explored up until now.

If you’re reading this post and we met after 2021 then we can check this off too.

I also wrote in How moving abroad alone has reshaped my identity, “… when I started my job in New York I found out most of my co-workers were from or had lived somewhere else. Almost everyone spoke more than two languages … People understood what it was like to be away from family for most of the year ... For the first time, I wasn’t the odd one out, if anything, the norm.”

I wanted to meet people from different places and of different backgrounds and there has been no better place than the big melting-pot of New York.

All of the above actually feeds into this one. What I do year-round living in New York is testimony to how I finally have hobbies beyond going to karaoke on weekends. But to be honest, I’m still working on how to “give back to the community” so I wouldn’t give it a perfect grade.

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Truthfully, it wasn’t until I had written all these stories, put them down on paper that it began to feel real. I’ve always struggled with feeling enough and being enough for myself. So writing has forced me to really see how far I have come and grown in the last four years.

In fact, I’ve only recently felt like I was finally allowed to go home. That I am allowed to miss home and acknowledge how much I need it. I am allowed to not prioritize my career above all else and I am allowed to be taken care of. I am allowed to do something because I feel like it and not because I have come to deserve it.

This permission has been a huge emotional relief for me. The day I told my manager I had finally made the decision to move back home, I slept like a baby. I’m counting down my finals days in New York but somehow this doesn’t feel like good-bye. I leave with the confidence that I can come back anytime and in fact see more of the world than before.

I also am excited for the next phase of my career, when I wrote “What’s the next thing I could do that would make me cry for months but thank myself years later?” in my career pivot post I was not kidding.

This is going to be a year of big changes I can already smell it. A year for taking risks and leaps of faith — stay tuned on my next conquer-the-world-plans.

Hopefully, this time I won’t need to write it all crunched up in economy class, I can write it in the comforts of my new home in Taipei while sipping coffee from my favorite ceramic cup brought back from New York.