by jo baquirin | 15 April 2026
this is an honest audit of loneliness.
this is navigating the silence after walking away from your traditional job, your 9-5, your everything. there’s something that happens after the adrenaline of self-liberation, or that freedom & independence high fades: the deafening quiet.
it follows soon after you leave the constraints of your 9-5. but instead of the expected instant relief, you’re met with an isolating loneliness inherent in rebuilding a life from scratch. and nobody warns you about it.
so today, i wanna dive deep into that friction between newfound autonomy and the loss of structures (social, communal). and break down how we can take this solitude & let it evolve from a terrifying void, into the essential and raw foundation for genuine and uncompromised creative output.
the realisation that walking away from a traditional path often feels like deleting your whole identity is tricky to navigate. in today’s world, you’ll experience this ‘digital fatigue’ with it. not only are you losing your work identity, it’ll feel like you’re deleting your physical identity altogether. thanks instagram.
we felt this after we left japan, blended with reverse-culture shock. we found ourselves withdrawing from friends & family, trying to navigate the toll of these huge life changes. unsurprisingly, one of the biggest withdrawals was digital. social media is the culprit for that weird, toxic, anxiety-inducing stress, giving us the illusion that everyone else is living an amazing life. and we don’t notice it but that expectation creeps up on us, that feeling of having to ‘prove’ that you’re living the best life consumes you. and that meant, for me, it was difficult to transition from sharing my postcard-like life in japan to losing it all and accepting that it was over.
honestly, you can’t even help it. even if they probably don’t care, you’ll feel it anyway. because somehow you know that as soon as you open up that “hey, my life has changed” can of worms, questions start rolling in. why? oh, that’s too bad you had it so good there. you had stable income, why did you leave? what’re you doing now? during this phase we found ourselves being less & less ‘visible’ online, because we were avoiding all of that. as much as we could, we kept to ourselves.
lana, my co-founder, came from the corporate world, and she was always praised for having a high-paying, stable, corporate job. and up to this day she tries really hard to stay away from those who keep asking why she can’t just go back to that ‘amazing’ corporate job. because she knows deep down, the whole time she was there, she was only trying to (mentally) survive each week, to make money to leave, while it drained her soul.
the exhaustion is not even funny. especially because she was raised feeling like she always had to prove herself. family judgement and all the ‘success is measured by how much money you earn’ is such a heavy weight she carries every single day. i see it first-hand how she grapples with knowing our version of success, but still feels genuinely hurt when the people close to her question this path we’re taking. it’s like, we try not to care, but that’s just not possible. of course we care, but we fight the urge to let the negativity affect us.
and we share the same sentiment with our friend groups. they’re all still working traditional jobs. they’re boxed inside this traditional mindset of what a career is supposed to look like - a sometimes outdated view of the landscape. there’s this strong feeling that we just can’t relate to them in that way anymore, even if we were once in that exact same space. now, it feels like we’re so far away. so detached that we’re in a totally different world. somehow, we only exist in this little bubble of nurturing & growing our business. the people you used to have around seem different. you’re different. and i think it’s just the bittersweet reality of... moving on.
that’s why we keep reminding ourselves of the small wins.
the encouraging comment from someone on youtube. the reply on a thread validating our point of view. the kind message from someone who viewed our website & said it gave them that feeling of ‘peace and calm’. the supportive person who frequently likes our linkedin posts. the ones who love, read, and watch our instagram posts & stories.
you have no idea how much these mean to us. these things keep us sane, above water. they keep us going because, somehow, they validate that we’re on the right path or that we’re doing something right (not everything) but something.
this is the reality of leaving your 9-5. you’re leaving & unlearning so much of your old self, mindset, values behind. your old identity, old friends, old achievements. that’s the social structure that gets disrupted when you leave any traditional path. you’ve built your identity, life, and world around your career that when you finally decide to leave, it’s like all of that just crumbles in the background. and it sucks. it’s frustrating. it’s lonely. it’s hard.
suddenly, there are no friends to call and talk to about how your day went at work (which is at home, at your desk, in front of your computer, thinking of better ways to run your business), instead of a place where you see the same people every day. losing that work community - where everyone knows what’s going on, everybody’s doing the same things, all of you encounter the same problems - and replacing it with just two people? some even just completely on their own? it’s instantly disorienting.
because the most sought-after external validation also disappears.
this is the part where we see freedom and autonomy and independence and self-liberation as a paradox. because we crave it. we want it. we dream of it. but actually once it’s there, it’s such a heavy weight on our shoulders.
nobody’s there to make decisions for us. nobody tells you what needs to be done by a certain due date. nobody tells us that’s wrong, that’s not the way to do it. and most importantly, nobody tells you you’re doing it right, keep going. do you see it? all of a sudden it’s all gone. it’s just us and our small studio. that’s it. literally every decision to be made, we handle. every recurring task, every packed schedule, every graphic, every email, every tiny tweak on the website, every newsletter, every video. all these things we work on day in and day out. we’ve been going for about half a year now, and still, there’s that deafening silence. literally nobody sees things being drafted and crafted, and nobody tells us shit. good or bad. truthfully, that is the struggle.
as a teacher, this external validation and praise came easy. it was almost normal to hear them throughout the year. in corporate, lana felt the same where it felt like you’re always being watched. but at least, one way or another, there was feedback. there were external forces telling you how things are supposed to be done. how you get the best results, how you improve your rating.
interestingly, looking at that now, the paradox reveals itself.
if you’re only doing things for external validation, why are you even doing them?
we don’t want that.
this is the very thing we don’t want: just being told what to do our whole life.
pat on the back when you’ve done a great job. being judged by random people and striving to not disappoint them, for a much bigger goal we don’t comprehend. it’s the following whatever’s there to follow, and just completely surrendering to the system. when i really think hard about it, this is why we left in the first place.
yet without them, we feel the void. and then we fill the void.
this is the dangerous part. a slippery slope. more often than not, when we feel this total silence? this screaming echoes of quiet days? we panic and try to do something. and more often than not, that something is just busywork. digital noise. doing something for the sake of doing. because we believe that this might actually save us from having to face the fact that... this is just the way it is. and if we don’t work on getting comfortable with sitting in silence, doing intentional work even when nobody’s responding or cheering us on, we will always be trapped in this paradox.
we’re only a year into working for ourselves, but we can tell you this much: you’ve got to keep going. because remember, if you keep working on it, the natural trajectory is... something’s gonna happen. it’s impossible not to see even a minuscule consequence from continuing to do the work you’ve always wanted to do. that’s why i truly believe i was meant to experience my hardest seasons in japan, so i can meet the version of myself who co-leads yōso with a weird sense of resilience. something that allows me to keep moving forward even when the only thing i wanna do is give up.
see, this radical solitude strips away the rehearsed layers of your personality.
when we stop performing for a boss, yearly evaluations, ratings, or even an algorithm, we’re forced to dig for our bedrock. and this is the dirty work. because it’s you, you see how much you really know and how much you don’t. you catch yourself resisting because you’re scared. you discover who you really are, stripped from the expectations of the system you used to crave approval from, and reflect with complete honesty... if you even like the real you.
it sounds crazy, right? but in this journey, you’ll realise how much of yourself was dictated and imposed by others. how your values and opinions were shaped by structures for compliance. how your view of achievement and success was skewed by arbitrary standards. and the moment you start seeing this new reality is when freedom truly becomes your weapon. because then, you see how many tiny decisions you get to make. from your daily schedule to your holidays to your philosophy to the life that’s waiting for you on the other side of every impossible season.
you get to meet yourself each day - have that raw, unfiltered dialogue with your craft. you decide to see the nitty-gritty. you get to do your work in a way that’s unique to only you.
and that is how you build a business that acts as a natural extension of your life and soul...
despite the loneliness,
despite the deafening silence,
despite the isolation.
so if you’re currently sitting in that void, trying to figure out who you are without your old titles, we want to help you navigate the quiet.
you don’t have to fill the silence with busywork. instead, we invite you to use it to reflect. we just released our free 4-Week Yōso Reflection Journal, holding weekly prompts to help you strip away the noise and figure out what an intentional life actually looks like for you.
and if you’re missing that sense of community and want to connect with others who are also unlearning the 9-5, we still have spots for our very first virtual workshop on april 22nd: live an intentional life, nurture an intentional business.
there are no corporate metrics here. just 60 minutes of storytelling, guided reflections, and real conversations. you can reserve your seat here.
remember: the silence isn’t empty.
it’s just the sound of your life finally beginning to breathe.
要素 yōso — essential elements only.
stay soulful,
jo from 要素 yōso studio
