jumping ship - with both feet

go for it, and don't look back

No more of this one-toe-testing-the-water stuff. After spending three years gazing out at the vast, inviting and unsure waters, I just dove in head first.

It's been about a year since my friend Ivan gave me the book The 4-Hour Work Week. It took me a few months to not feel silly reading it - a business self-help book of sorts with a gilded guy in a hammock on the front. When I finally did pick it up (after removing the jacket), I hid myself away for a few days and emerged with a fresh perspective on life. The impact the book had on me cannot be exaggerated. Of course it provided valuable lessons for One Mango Tree - finding a good fulfillment service, outsourcing anything and everything you can, being comfortable with delegating. But bigger than that, I realized there were other people out there like me - people who felt completely stifled and discouraged by the 9-to-5 career existence.

There is another way to live.

When I left DC, I intended to stay with the day job I've had since moving there in 2005. All fall I'd been experimenting with working remote, and started taking Fridays off to work on my business. I'd convinced myself it was the office environment, not the work itself, that was killing me. Once I got to Uganda, I continued the remote work thing; checking in, doing my reports, trying to make the conference calls work. And then, suddenly, One Mango Tree really started working. And I started teaching yoga. And I realized how little it really costs to have a great life in Uganda.

And so on Friday, I took the leap. I quit AIR.

I dove in head first. And let me tell you - the water feels really damn good.