The Two Years Before I Quit

Dear you,

In my first letter, I told you that you don’t need to be ready — you need to begin. Today I want to go back a little further, to the years before I began anything. The years before I quit, when I didn’t even know I was going to.

I joined a Tokyo advertising agency as a new grad in 2019. And honestly? I liked it. The work was interesting, my colleagues were good people, and I was learning fast. This is not a story about escaping a terrible job. It’s a story about something quieter and, in some ways, harder to act on.

Early on, a chance appeared: a project bringing an American business into Japan. They needed someone who could work in English — part interpreter, part project manager. I raised my hand. I got in.

Then COVID happened, and the project stalled.

I told myself it was temporary. Everyone did. But one year passed, then two. The world slowly reopened, and the project didn’t. There was no dramatic cancellation, no meeting where someone said “it’s over.” It just... never moved again. I kept doing other work — good work, work I didn’t hate — while the thing I’d actually raised my hand for sat frozen somewhere in a spreadsheet.

Here’s the part I find hard to explain, even now. My job was going well. On paper, I had nothing to complain about. And yet something in me stayed hungry.

I noticed it most when I saw friends who were out there doing it — working in English, and especially the ones working in entertainment overseas. That was the field I’d quietly wanted to be part of. Every time I saw them, I felt genuinely happy for them, and at the same time, a small ache I couldn’t name. It wasn’t jealousy exactly. It was more like watching someone live a version of your life that you kept postponing.

And I want to be honest about why I was postponing it: I wasn’t confident in my English. At all. I’d been chosen for that project partly because I could speak English, but inside, I didn’t trust it. I wasn’t sure I could actually interpret in a real meeting. I didn’t even know how to build a proper deck in English. The gap between “the English person on the team” and how I actually felt was its own quiet weight.

So the thought that eventually formed wasn’t a grand plan. It was closer to a question: What if I just went to America and found out how much I’m actually worth there? Not “I’m ready to go.” More like — I’m tired of not knowing. Let me go see.

Then came the moment I still think about.

More than half a year before I left, my manager brought up a promotion. Manager track. The kind of news you’re supposed to be thrilled about. And sitting there, I made a decision I hadn’t planned to make in that moment: I told the truth. I said I was thinking about leaving. I told them I wanted to go to the United States.

I know the standard playbook says you never do this. You smile, you accept, you job-hunt in secret. But hiding it felt heavier than saying it.

What happened next surprised me. Instead of writing me off, they made me an offer: stay one more year, and they’d move my promotion forward. So I stayed. I worked that year fully. And during it, I found a job in the US, got my visa, and in 2023, I got on the plane.

Looking back, those two frozen years weren’t wasted — but not because “everything happens for a reason.” They mattered because they showed me, slowly and undeniably, what I couldn’t stop wanting. A stalled project, a hungry feeling, friends living the postponed version of my life. That’s what it took.

If you’re in your own version of those two years right now — job is fine, life is fine, something is quietly not fine — I’m not going to tell you to quit. I’m just going to tell you that the feeling is information. Mine took two years to become a beginning. Yours is allowed to take its time too.

Nami

P.S. Have you ever felt that ache watching someone live the life you kept postponing? Hit reply and tell me — I read every one.