Mid-Sabbatical Reflections

Sometimes the best part about taking a sabbatical is realizing that you can.

Hi from somewhere over the Pacific Ocean!

When I last wrote, we had just landed in the U.S. Suddenly those three weeks have come and gone, and we are on our way back to the Antipodes! While we returned to the U.S. for family and friends rather than tourism, I found myself mostly in new places! The beautiful coastal towns in Rhode Island felt similar in vibe to New Zealand, and visiting Detroit reminded me of my love for urban history and planning. I can already sense some small ways I have changed, like becoming more observant of the natural environment. What I’ve learned through conservation work in New Zealand has given me a much greater appreciation for the estuaries, wetlands, rivers, and wildlife back home.

At first, it felt weird to be going home in the middle of our year abroad. My other experiences living abroad were much shorter and more defined. Coming back meant it was over! Going home in the middle of our recess year has prepared us for some of the (albeit minor) culture shock of returning. I physically reacted when my bill went up by $10 with the addition of tax and tip, and my brain is probably forever confused from having to once again reverse the position of the turn signal and the windshield wipers. The time and distance we’ve had away, along with sharing our experiences with people back home, have also allowed us to start processing some of the more lasting themes of our year. I had been jotting down notes for a mid-year recess reflection for almost two months, but I’ve had to wrestle to figure out how I’m feeling at this transition point in our sabbatical. Much like my “pre-sabbatical sabbatical” newsletter, I’ve organized a few reflections by theme.

On sabbaticals

In the U.S., taking extended time off of work is abnormal. The primary reasons for extended leave are having children or severe health issues, far from restful activities! People often take this time unpaid, if they can even take it at all. American workers struggle to take even short periods of time off, making the idea of an extended period almost laughable.

Our economic structures, like healthcare being tied directly to employment, are not designed to support time off. While every commencement or career panel speaker will quip about how their path wasn’t linear, we are still socialized to understand success as advancement in terms of position and income. Maybe you will do something quirky and switch from “policy analyst” to “strategic analyst,” but there really aren’t a lot of models for switching from “senior analyst” to “waiter” or “unemployed” that aren’t considered failure. We may praise people like artists with highly visible, lucrative careers once these risks pay off, but we aren’t taught to value time devoted to personal development unless it later produces something of societal value.

While sabbaticals have started to become more common for professions outside of just academia, the idea that people can and should take periodic breaks throughout their career to recalibrate and explore other interests still feels personally risky and outside the norm. It may sound redundant, but one of the most valuable things about taking a sabbatical/recess/time away from work has simply been realizing that I could do so. This still feels so countercultural in America (“I’d love to do something like that, but I can’t” is a common refrain). It’s been helpful living in a country where unstructured time off for travel and enjoyment is common and encouraged. Having an “OE,” or “overseas experience,” is so expected of Kiwi young adults that employers even ask about it in job interviews. It’s refreshing and validating to spend time in a place where it is the norm to prioritize life experiences more broadly than just building their careers.

Before this year, I would have *said* that my identity wasn’t primarily rooted in my contributions and advancement in my career. In taking time off, I have big-time called my own bluff. One of the things I wanted to work on this year is my self-confidence and self-esteem. Well, be careful what you wish for! Removing myself from traditional markers of success that have guided my life, however much I might say they don’t define me, has quickly given me an opportunity to do so. Moving abroad had an initial “cool factor” that made it easy for others to celebrate our decision. But months later, as other people’s lives advance normally, doubt has crept in. I find myself making unnecessary, self-deprecating jokes about living in a van and about when I’ll get a “real job.”  I have been putting constant pressure on myself to produce some kind of “deliverable” and to figure out what I am doing next. Both of these are things I genuinely want to do! It’s appropriate and great for time off to include space for personal projects and figuring out future goals. But my desire to do so is in part driven by a need for others to be able to see what I am doing as valuable. I am grasping for a justification for my time off rather than just allowing the time to be intrinsically meaningful.

Not infrequently, I get in my head or am reminded that I am diverging from the path expected of someone who has been given as many opportunities as me. It’s easy to be unkind to myself and create the narrative that I simply failed or dropped out of my given career path because I couldn’t handle the stress, put my head down, and push through like everyone else. It takes effort to remind myself that while doing so may have gained me more external validation and faster advancement, that is not how I want to spend my one wild and precious life! I hope to have a career that I find meaningful and enjoy, but that is just one component of the life I want to live. While this sounds almost painfully obvious, actually taking actions in alignment with that belief can feel really threatening! We are accustomed and, for most people, required to spend the majority of our time at work. It can be hard to manage work and life tasks, much less squeezing in time for hobbies and personal development. Even the concept of “time off” implies a necessary return to a life dominated by work, as opposed our non-work time being the core substance of our lives. Taking an extended period where the majority of my energy is focused on myself, not a job, is an exercise in self-determination.¹ It feels really powerful to know what it feels like to center life around exploration, relaxation, and enjoyment. It’s wild to imagine how individual lives and society at large might shift if more people were able to devote this kind of time to themselves.

On trying new things

When I imagined taking a sabbatical, I envisioned trying my hand at a bunch of new things that could potentially become careers. Wanting a change from office work and its lifestyle, I wanted to diversify my skills and see if I found more satisfaction in different types of tasks. I imagined cooking in a restaurant, trying my hand at audiobook recordings, and learning farm work. As our year has unfolded, our actual jobs (waiting tables, trapping, and managing an ice rink) have been a little different than expected! While these weren’t the exact roles I envisioned, I have nonetheless gained the confidence I wanted from them. When I lived in Denver, I would daydream about alternative careers, and feel too intimidated to even explore the possibility. While it’s important to resist trying to turn every hobby into a side hustle, I no longer feel afraid to reach out and ask. It turns out it doesn’t take long to realize you don’t want to work at a bed & breakfast (especially unpaid, lol) or that you can get paid to hike a few hours a week while supporting conservation efforts. Thinking more expansively about the work that I do, paid or otherwise, makes me feel less alienated from my labor.

On writing and connection

When it’s easy to get in my head and wonder whether this collection of odd jobs and hikes is adding up to anything, I remind myself that simply creating an excuse to write regularly has been one of the most meaningful parts of this year. I put a lot of effort into constructing these newsletters – not just recapping our travels, but sharing my thoughts on life as I am still figuring them out. Sharing my perspectives with people from such different areas of my life has pushed me to integrate different parts of myself. As someone making a big change in my career, it can be tempting to think that all of this writing should be setting me up to write professionally. But then I have to remind myself that I am already living out the best parts of being a writer. Developing an honest narrative of my thoughts, experiences, and worldview for myself and others has been such a boon to my mental health that I don’t know how I ever lived without it. Having people whose opinions I value engaging with my ideas literally makes my day. I have reconnected with people I didn’t even realize were reading my newsletter, and I feel closer to longtime friends for engaging with me in a new way. Sending a big, big thank you to anyone who has taken the time to read and respond to these posts — your emails are the wind in my sails.

Etc!

There are too many other big themes to write about, and in some cases I’ve already done so! I’ve confronted anxieties around personal finance, re-examined what it means to live my values, and built community in a temporary home. Having extended time off has also given us time for deep rest, for the “vacation to recover from our vacation” that people often joke they need. Chris and I have really enjoyed being long-term travel companions. We feel like we’ve cheated the system by getting to build our shared communication, division of labor, and other rhythms of partnership with the fun backdrop of being in New Zealand. In the day-to-day, it can sometimes just feel like it’s just another moment in one big, long trip abroad. But when I look back after nine months, I can see how much I am shifting my perspective, getting unstuck, and growing as a person. It’s this mindset I am carrying into the next chapter, with excitement and, gradually, a little less trepidation.

Working Holiday Part Two!

As I wrote before, I anticipated that it might be difficult to answer such a broad question like “how’s New Zealand?” I was grateful to be wrong on this! I have really appreciated people’s incredibly thoughtful and nuanced questions that made it feel easier to talk about our time away. It turns out the more difficult questions were about our plans for our return to New Zealand, and the when/where/what of our eventual return to the U.S. Those are hard to answer when we’ve designed a lifestyle where we’re making decisions on week-to-week basis rather than a five-year plan. That being said, we have developed some guiding ideas and hopes for part two of our working holiday:

• Embracing the openness of this time: Time is often people’s scarcest resource, but we currently have a lot of it! It can be intimidating to figure out how to spend that time. We want to make the best of it without feeling pressure to optimize. It feels nice to have the flexibility to just say yes to things as they arise, and to be able to make changes quickly if something isn’t working.

• Pursuing creativity: We are planning on taking some arts classes. I plan to devote more time to writing — not just this newsletter, but other forms as well!

• Prioritizing (relative) stability: While we’re really pleased with the extensiveness of our travels, I’ve been happiest and least stressed when we are “anchored” in one place. It’s unusual that staying somewhere for six weeks counts as stability, but being in one place until our backpacking trip is something we are really looking forward to.

• Working on self-compassion: I can see my self-confidence growing, but I still really struggle with self-compassion. Especially in times of uncertainty, I am incredibly hard on myself. If I can’t learn to be kind to myself in a time where my goals are literally “prioritize self” and “have fun,” then when will I?

Part One Superlatives

• Books read: Rachel: 27 – best book: Doppelgänger by Naomi Klein. Chris: 37 – best book: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.

• Items lost: my favorite long-sleeve athletic shirt! A new bottle of shampoo! Chris’s work pants! Basically every deodorant we have ever bought (why???)

• Only major souvenir: a vintage snowsuit I thrifted for $6 from a fall festival on the Banks Peninsula. Absolutely no practical use for our time in New Zealand (except maybe freezing in our car), but had to have it.

  

• Favorite New Zealand treats: Yo-yos! They’re like two sugar cookies mashed together with flavored frosting in the middle. Classic New Zealand fresh fruit ice cream is a close second.

• Favorite New Zealand slang: Whimsical nicknames for tradespeople. An electrician is a “sparkie.” A carpenter is a “chippie,” and a bricklayer is a “brickie.”

• Best addition to our trip: Our stuffed bunny, Peek-a-Bunny-Boo, that we literally talk to. We also have a Highland cow named Harry that I have a polite disdain for.

  

• Item we are so glad we packed: Our Rumpl! Shout-out to Chris’s brother and his fiancée for the very lightweight, practical, waterproof blanket we take everywhere.

  

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By the end of this writing, we have made it to Australia! We’re staying about an hour south of Sydney and volunteering on a littoral rainforest restoration project. We head back to New Zealand to reunite with our van in less than a week! More soon!

1. I mean this not in the political sense, though the two are related, of groups’ rights to form political entities and have representation, often discussed in relation to Indigenous groups. I instead refer to this in the broader sense. I like this summary by the Australian government: “At its core, self-determination ‘is concerned with the fundamental right of people to shape their own lives’. In a practical sense, self-determination means that we have the freedom to live well, to determine what it means to live well according to our own values and beliefs.” I believe that economic structures heavily restrict this ability for most people by tying survival to labor.