Corporate Detox: 100 Days Later

It’s been one hundred days since I walked away from corporate life. I expected relief. I expected rest. What I didn’t expect was how much of myself would start showing back up again. Creativity, play, strength, and joy have been sneaking back in, sometimes in tiny bits, other times in full-on waves.

Creativity came back

I never thought I’d be drawing again, but here I am, filling pages with messy sketches and redrawing until my hand hurts. I’ve found so much joy in imperfection, in letting my mind tune out the noise while my pen finds its way across the page. Music has made its way back too. I play my own little living room sets of house, soul, and R&B while dancing by myself. There is something so freeing about moving without an audience.

Strength feels different now

My workouts used to feel like one more task to check off before I ran to the next meeting. Now they feel intentional. I’ve been lifting heavier, building more muscle, and taking slow walks just because they feel good. Strength has stopped being about squeezing fitness into my calendar and started being about finding joy in my body. I hope one day I can help other women feel this mix of physical, emotional, and spiritual strength.

Healing looks different too

In the last year I needed weekly therapy just to calm my nervous system from the stress of corporate life. These days, I go monthly. Instead of spending an hour trying to catch my breath, I have the space to focus on relationships and growth. Progress is no longer just surviving.

Parenting with more presence

My son and I have been playing more, drawing together, dreaming up ideas. He’s finally riding a bike and I get to be fully present for it. I pick him up from school, hand him a still-warm cookie, and watch his face light up. Those small moments feel bigger than any corporate promotion I ever chased.

New practices, new projects

I started Soo Bahk Do and I am working toward my first stripe. I’ve been doing my own house and landscaping projects and, in the process, I’ve met more neighbors in the past few months than in the last four years. Ideas often come to me while I’m digging in the dirt or on those slow walks I no longer force myself to multitask through.

And then there’s meny.me. I started coding it myself after experimenting with a few different tools. It’s a platform to help women advocate for themselves through the menopause transition. I’ve blown up my old UX process and I’m documenting what it looks like to design in this new environment, where those of us who actually understand customer discovery are uniquely positioned to shape the landscape. I’m testing with my first set of users now, and in October I’ll be starting an accelerator program to keep sharpening my vision alongside other builders.

What I know for sure

I don’t believe in the idea of a mid-life crisis. That voice that shows up in your forties and fifties, the one that tells you something isn’t working, is not a crisis. It’s wisdom. It’s a signal that you have the experience and perspective to do something meaningful. It is an awakening.

And after 100 days away from corporate life, here is what I have validated. The controlling environments that companies are doubling down on are destroying creativity and innovation. There are more bad leaders than good. And the current trend of shoving AI into everything as a replacement for humans is short-sighted and wrong. Leaving corporate gave me the space to see that AI can actually be a powerful assistant and creative partner. It still makes silly choices, but it’s incredible when guided by real human intelligence.

The biggest change

I have more ideas than I have time for. In corporate life, most of those ideas went unheard because senior leaders were already dictating the direction, often detached from the real needs of customers or employees. Out here on my own, ideas don’t get shut down by default. I can actually follow them, test them, and see where they go.

That shift feels like oxygen.

And sometimes, in between chasing down all those ideas, I bake cookies.