Why A Life Of Time Freedom Is Crucial For Me

There are many ways to live a life. There are many ways to not live a life as well. For the longest time, I felt like I was doing the latter (without any time freedom at all).

Oh, I was breathing in oxygen, and breathing out carbon dioxide at a regular frequency. But I felt like something was missing from the equation of breathing in and out. It wasn’t like I was breathing in and out for some awesome goal in the future.

I didn’t want children or marriage, so what was I actually living for? Just to keep on buying a lot of useless shit, to put into a home that I barely spent any time in. I spent all of my free time shopping, because I was so bored at work, that I needed to soothe myself with lots of pretty little things, that lost their shimmer almost as soon as I had purchased them.

I wanted to spend my time doing something else. When I poked and prodded at my heart, it kept on saying the same thing, over and over again. “I want more time. I want more time. Really, I want more time. I want more time freedom.”

I Realized I Didn’t Want More Stuff Or Money – But More Time Freedom

I already was living that life. You know the one. I lived in a fancy apartment downtown Toronto, barely keeping up with the bills, but keeping my head above water. Wearing fancy clothes, going out dancing with friends, getting drunk on extremely expensive cocktails, working all week, never doing enough for the boss, and having barely enough time to eat dinner, and fall asleep at night.

It was one of those lives. It looked sparkling from the outside in. Everyone oohed and aahed over it.

And for a little while, even I was enamored by it. But thankfully only for a little while. Soon enough, I realized that I literally had no time to do anything I wanted to do. I had a hundred different things on my bucket list, and on my want-to-do list. But in between the 8-6 job, and the yoga class at night, and the meditation in the morning, I had no time to do anything else.

I’m serious when I say I have no idea what people with children do. How do they manage their time? I guess they have no time to do anything else besides taking care of their children.

But, I sometimes would skip dinner so I could go to a yoga class because I was feeling so stressed. I would go to bed hungry, because I didn’t want to eat too late, and also, I didn’t want to miss out on too much sleep, because I had to get to work early.

It was madness. I couldn’t do it for long. I really don’t know how people do it for years and years and years on end. Maybe I am a wimp, but I couldn’t do it.

Free Time Is The Most Precious Commodity Out There, According To Me

The main reason I moved to Thailand was not that the air quality here is great (it sucks), or the infrastructure is good (it’s passable). But because being in a country like this, allows me to reduce my expenses by ten times, which means that I am not working such long hours to pay bills just to survive. I am able to work shorter hours, make enough money to pay all of my bills and a little bit more, and then use the extra time to do what I want.

One of the things I always wanted to do when I was time-poor was to start my own YouTube channel. Also, I always wanted to take voice lessons, and art lessons, and self-defense lessons, and so much more.

With the additional time that I have now, I am able to spend my mornings working on the money aspect of things, and then my afternoons and evenings are free to do with as I please. I take Thai lessons because I love living in this country and I want to be able to communicate with the locals.

Then, I go off to the half a dozen different classes that I am booked into.

Time Freedom Is Precious

And this is exactly how I want to spend my time on this planet. Learning new things, growing, meeting new people, eating delicious foods, having novel experiences. Not spending all of my time working at a job to pay bills that are as a result of that job.

I don’t know about you, but I hate the idea of spending all of my time at a job, working for someone else, lining someone else’s pockets, utilizing my youth, energy, and skills to propagate someone else’s dreams. If I am going to work hard, I want to work on stuff that matters to me and brings me forward.

That’s basically the gist of why I left the corporate world. The reasons are varied, of course. Everyone has a different reason for leaving. But, for me, my precious time was being wasted in a way that made my heart hurt every single day. I couldn’t do it anymore.

This is my time freedom story.