Leaving the corporate vortex requires a leap of faith, one I didn’t feel ready for until I sat down and honestly listed everything that was holding me back from taking a step toward Chindo.
A few days before I was let go by my employer, Arif and I were at a finca somewhere in northern Tenerife, enjoying our morning coffee amid fresh mountain air, when I said out loud, “I don’t hate work, but I hate how I have been working. I want to design my life so that my work integrates well in my life rather than consumes me.”
Exploring Northern Tenerife
The second day I was back at work, my manager set a meeting with me. I didn’t think anything of it. We had an upcoming one-on-one anyway. But she showed up late, and I noticed the HRBP was on the call. I knew exactly what was about to happen. Many of us in the office had been whispering for months about the layoffs taking place: a teammate on a project, a colleague, suddenly gone.
“That’s your sign, Caroline,” Arif told me later that day.
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A lot happened between that day and the time of this writing. In the first month, my body kept running on inertia even after the hustle stopped. I did nothing but busily cook, clean, watch every episode of The Mentalist, and oversee a long-overdue flooring replacement. It wasn’t until the second month that I was ready to actually slow down.
Meeting mom in Thailand and our mother-daughter retreat felt like the kickoff for my new era, and symbolised the reset I needed. My post-corporate self had hoped to experience awe and inspiration in abundance. I’m grateful that wish has been fulfilled, again and again. In the months since, I’ve had so many beautiful moments I’ll cherish forever: time with loved ones, catching up with old friends and building new ones, meaningful conversations, be-still-my-heart-beautiful settings, new flavours, new things learned, and — finally — finding courage.
Exploring southern hemisphere
When I finally sat down and named what was holding me back, the list was short but honest: starting over is scary. Not having a steady paycheck is scary. And doing something in food is scary. Everyone has an opinion about how exhausting it is, how hard it is to scale. None of that stopped being true. But naming it made space for something else.
Exploring northern hemisphere
This new-found courage pushed me to take the steps needed to realise a deep-seated, dormant desire to explore creativity through food, and to use technology to make that exploration easier. So here we are, starting in October, I can start selling food under the trading label: Chindo. Chindo is my attempt to finally build what I told myself in that finca: work that explores my curiousity and fits into my life instead of consuming it. Stay tune! I am tying a few loose ends and I can’t wait to share more details about Chindo with you.
Exploring new recipes!
