“I gave the last nine years of my life to my job. It was all I...

“I gave the last nine years of my life to my job. It was all I did. My work made me feel ‘needed.’ I was an accountant and I could do things that nobody else could do. My bosses kept telling me how important I was to the company. But one day they asked me to ‘touch up’ some numbers to make them look better. And I realized I was giving them way more of my time than they deserved—so I quit. The first thing I did was rest. The second thing I did was repair the relationships that I’d been neglecting. I reached out to old friends. I arranged to be with them physically, and not just over texts or Facebook. At first I was nervous because I didn’t know what we’d talk about. It had been so long. But it was easy. One of them had just gotten a scholarship. Another was becoming a father. So much had happened in their lives that I had missed. It felt so good to reconnect. For nine years I’d been focusing on numbers. It wasn’t real. Now I’m connecting with people again, and I feel like my feet are back on the ground.”

(Bogotá, Colombia)