Secrets out! I’ve moved to Bangkok, Thailand indefinitely to pursue a new career chapter as an English Language Teacher with Sine Education! I’ve been flirting with the idea of making a pivot to teaching for years. Through my recent community workshop and training work with nonprofits, and within marketing, I pivoted to influencer and creator marketing as an attempt to do more “human” work as much as I possibly could. After my SINE Teacher Training, I can wholeheartedly confirm that this path feels so right, and that I should have followed my gut from the very beginning. I am ecstatic to have been placed in my new position at the historic Wat Suthiwararam Boys School. 👨🏫
My partner, Anthony, and I primarily made the leap here to take care of his mother, Kanta, who is recovering from years of on and off cancer battles and chemo treatment. She can no longer walk and has begun to lose the ability to perform basic daily functions on her own, like eating daily meals and going to the bathroom — it is undoubtedly an all hands on deck situation. Everyday after I finish my classes, I take my Grab Motorbike to meet Anthony at the family home in Bang Sue to spend time and take care of her however we can each day. Through the ups and downs, I am so deeply grateful to have found such a sense of inimitable belonging and well-deserved adventure here with him and his extended family, and for the opportunity to once again transmute myself, hone new skills, and realign more closely to the voice within myself that I should have had the courage and selfishness to listen to more than a decade ago. ✨
🐏 Looking back more than 10 years ago to 2012, I was a Journalism Major at Fordham University, writing my own Men’s Style articles for The Maroon Man, a school paper adjacent blog on campus, while interning at the then AOL + Huffington Post, with dreams of eventually teaching English abroad with the JET program in Japan. I was swiftly encouraged to develop this passion into a more lucrative career in Social Media Marketing, neutering myself to 140 characters or less for major brands at advertising agencies. For the past decade and then some, this work has been a rollercoaster, and I am so fortunate for how it has molded me and the track it provided, but it was never a perfect fit, nor my true passion. More and more I’ve come to believe that everything occurs in divine timing, and that I’ve been given an auspicious second chance at this initial path towards what I originally felt called to achieve in life — sharing my love of language, creating community, and facilitating interpersonal human connection. 🥰
When people have asked me … “What would you do if you had all the money in the world?” Without hesitation my first response is that I would study and teach languages — I had just never realized how to actualize that dream into a career path. Whether I found SINE or it found me, I feel so lucky every day to be in this chapter of my life, doing what I love for the first time in a long time. In many ways I feel that I’ve been training for Bangkok my entire life — my years living in Chinatown, my love of mopeds, nightlife, languages, and bazaars.
🦋 Through my countless transfigurations, I’ve learned the importance of not becoming stuck in the illusion of seemingly comfortable mediocrity and to value above all else the priceless freedom that comes with total surrender to exploration of the unknown. And that it alchemically requires, and is always worth, the sacrifice of emotional and physical unencumbering to open these new doors.🚪
