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An empty living room painted in grey: folding doors stand open onto a back room with a closed piano, and a dark polished table fills the foreground.

The Call I Expected to Be Urgent

ByIan HwangOct 10, 20268 min read

A former colleague called. For ten seconds, I expected it to be urgent. That is the whole event, and I would not normally write about a phone call. I am writing about this one because it came after I had retired, after about thirty years in finance, and those ten seconds showed me something I […]

Three girls in white caps and black-and-red orphanage dress in a dim room; the one in the middle sews, one holds an open book, one listens.

Why Keeping Your Options Open Gets More…

ByIan HwangOct 12, 202616 min read

Margot keeps her CPA license in her wallet, behind her hospital badge. She has renewed it six times since she last signed…

Detail of Caspar David Friedrich's Two Men Contemplating the Moon: two men seen from behind on a rocky path at dusk, one resting a hand on the other's shoulder, beneath the bare branches of an old oak, looking toward a thin crescent moon.

Halfway Through My Career Advice, I Stopped…

ByIan HwangOct 15, 202610 min read

A younger professional asked me for career advice. Halfway through my answer, I realized I no longer believed some of it. If…

Painted view of a Dutch town on the horizon with church towers, a windmill, a towpath with small walking figures, a wooden footbridge and a canal under a cloudy sky.

Returning to Seoul

ByIan HwangOct 17, 20267 min read

In the first week of February 2025, I returned to Seoul. The crisp air of late winter greeted me. But what struck…

An older farmer in a cap and grey jacket, a cloth seed bag across his chest, scatters seed over a bare brown field with a whitewashed thatched farmhouse behind him.

7 Signs You Have Outgrown Your Career

ByIan HwangOct 19, 202615 min read

Owen came back from two weeks in Crete on a Sunday night. By 9:40 on Monday morning, the holiday was gone. He…