At that age, I couldn't find another IT job. No one wants to hire a middle-aged IT manager without a degree-especially after 9/ 1 1, the market and economy are in chaos and the future is uncertain. I lived in Houston at that time, just after the collapse of Enron. I was competing with the elites in the IT field-Enron had enough money to hire the best IT staff, and after Enron went bankrupt, they all went out to look for new jobs.

This is a struggle that lasted for six months. I submitted my resume locally and then went to all parts of the United States, but I didn't get a reply. I began to worry that even if I continued to submit my resume for half a year or longer, I might not be hired.

I became an entrepreneur. I started investing in real estate-repairing houses and buying rental houses. This is very interesting and interesting. I arrange my work according to my own time, make my own business decisions and don't report to anyone.

At the same time, it is full of challenges and pressures. My property is well funded, but there is little cash flow, so I can't pay the mortgage and maintenance costs. So, I stretched my good credit to the limit, even to the point of sweating at night-worried about how to borrow money from Peter to repay Paul this month, hoping that everything would not collapse.

Why? I decided to stop fighting the market, sell my rented house and move to Mexico-that's my long-cherished dream; The cost of living there is about one-third that of the United States; I don't have to endure the severe winter there anymore.

I have never regretted it. Seven years later, I lived in two other beautiful countries; I don't want to go back to America at all

Life in third world countries is great! Zero pressure, my money goes 3-4 times farther, and the nature here is far better than anything I have experienced in America. I dived into warm waters and started shooting aerial videos of beautiful beaches and waterfalls with my new drone.

With the 20/20 hindsight of Hawkeye, I can now see that in both cases, I surrendered to reality instead of continuing to resist. This surrender strategy leads to gently closing one door, opening another door and entering a brighter and bigger life.