Author: Chih Sang

I didn’t quit my job in a blaze of glory. There was no mic drop, no Devil Wears Prada moment where I dramatically tossed my phone into a fountain and walked away in slow motion. It was quieter than that. More like the last scene of a sad indie film where the protagonist finally admits mostly to themselves that something is very wrong.

Eighty-hour workweeks have a way of hollowing you out. At first, you don’t notice it. You tell yourself you’re being productive, ambitious, resilient. You drink more Red Bull. You cancel plans. You stop asking yourself how you’re doing because you already know the answer and don’t have time to hear it. Eventually, the mental fatigue stops feeling like exhaustion and starts feeling darker. Heavier. The kind of thoughts that arrive uninvited and refuse to leave.

So I did the least dramatic but most necessary thing: I stepped away. I took a sabbatical. I chose not to disappear, but to go to put literal distance between myself and the life that was quietly breaking me.

This trip begins with a car, a map (mostly ignored), and a long drive west. Toronto to Vancouver across the top of Canada, then back through the United States, looping North America like I’m trying to outline the shape of something I lost. Or maybe the shape of something I’m hoping to find.

Today is Day One. Toronto to Sault Ste. Marie. Not exactly the stuff of sweeping travel montages. No sun-drenched coastlines or charming European cafés. Just highway, trees, sky, and the steady hum of tires on asphalt. But if movies have taught me anything, it’s that the beginning of the journey is rarely glamorous. It’s the awkward first act the part where the character is still carrying all their baggage, both literal and emotional.

As I drove north, the city thinned out and the noise in my head slowly followed. Somewhere past the familiar exits and into stretches of road that felt almost meditative, I realized how long it had been since I’d been alone with my thoughts without multitasking my way out of them. No meetings. No Microsoft Team pings. No alert emails pretending to be emergencies. Just me and the road, like a low-budget road movie where nothing happens and somehow, everything does.

I kept waiting for a big, cinematic feeling. A swelling score. A moment of clarity. Instead, what I felt was quieter: relief mixed with fear, freedom with a touch of what on earth have I done? The kind of emotional cocktail that usually shows up right after a character makes a life-altering decision in the middle of a runtime and you know the story is about to get interesting.

Sault Ste. Marie will be my stop tonight. A place just a few hours north of where I live but never ever been to. That feels symbolic, even if I’m trying not to overthink it. For now, it’s enough that I’m moving. That I chose the road instead of the edge. That I’m allowing myself to believe just a little that joy isn’t something I lost forever, only something I misplaced under deadlines and expectations.

This drive isn’t about reaching the west coast. Not really. It’s about what happens in the in-between moments the quiet scenes that don’t make the trailer but end up meaning the most. If this were a movie, this would be the opening shot: a car heading west, a person unsure of the plot, and the faint sense that the story hasn’t ended yet.

Tomorrow, I keep going. And for the first time in a long time, that feels like enough.