2023-05-13 Taylor Hickem
Well I’m glad you asked!
Here’s a look back at how my 1st quarter of 2023 has started off. Spoiler alert —> pretty awesome! All things considered. I’ve got a lot to be grateful for and a lot to be excited about looking ahead. In this update, I’ll review the big wins at the start of the quarter, financial performance highlights, and then go a bit deep into where my mind has been. I still have to learn from these challenges that I’ve faced, and they are relevant for where I am at today as I start the second quarter of 2023. At the end of the update, I’ll share what I have to offer, and where I will need some help.
Before jumping right in, a little context on my personal goals for this year in the larger story of where I’m at in life.
This is a chart of my financial performance from 2008 when I graduated college, until the last year, 2022. There’s a lot to unpack in this story of my adult life.
There’s a global pandemic somewhere in there, 6 episodes in an original podcast series, a climate rally at Hong Lim Park in Sep 2019, 8 addresses, 8 employment roles as Engineer, Software Developer and small business owner, an international move from the US to Singapore on 27 Dec 2010, a marriage (2 Sep 2013) and then a divorce (1 Jan 2021). Permanent residence application approval in Dec 2017 and a taste of tear gas and civil disobedience in Hong Kong in Dec 2019, among other adventures during my sabbatical of 2018 to 2020.
In that chart is the story of me searching for a fulfilling life that is meaningful to me, while **confronting the realities and constraints of realising that ambition. Up until my sabbatical in 2018, I was on a pretty traditional, familiar script that many of us follow. Get good grades, get a good job, get married, pile up a nice nest for retirement. Aaaahhhhh, the good life.
Well, not really.
In an earlier memoir, the road to retirement, I elaborate on the personal intellectual journey of seeing my life as more than that script. I realised that I had bigger ambitions. Some call it their “North Star.” I wanted to feel that my life has meaning, purpose, a taste of adventure, at least that’s one way of putting it.
I learned what I set out to achieve from the sabbatical, to better understand what I would do with my time if I didn’t need full-time employment to sustain my living expenses. The podcast series last year is one example, but what I really found as my passion is research, deep diving into big questions and puzzles that have high impact potential to help improve lives for generations to come. Climate change is a great fit for such a puzzle.
My North Star has a few components to it, defined in terms of ultimate outcomes and the inputs that enable those outcomes. The ultimate ambition is to publish impactful research on the solutions to climate change, and problems similar to climate change. That effort is a meaningful and exciting adventure that I look forward to, and where I want to invest my limited time and attention.
Then there is reality. In Feb 2022 last year, I was bombarded by several challenges that I briefly delved into in my 2022 year-in-review. They tested my capacity to make any meaningful progress towards this lofty ambition. I needed to switch to a new employer and get it before the deadline for my PR re-entry permit renewal, which happened in Nov of 2022. While this extra 5 months of unemployment was an opportunity to develop a podcast series, my financial performance for the year took a hit.
Once I gained employment again in Sep, I needed to withdraw from my role as podcast host so that I could recover both my income and financial stability, and also secure my residency status here in Singapore. Which brings me to Jan 1st 2023.