The Pre-Sabbatical Sabbatical
Reflections from 2-3 months of recharging and not working. And when the heck are we actually leaving for New Zealand?
Hi again from Rhode Island, where we’ve been enjoying a cozy start to the new year. For those of you whom we first told we were shipping off to New Zealand back in October, you may be wondering “are they ever actually leaving?”
While the exciting announcement was us moving to New Zealand, as you may have noticed, we have also spent 2-3 months resting and relaxing with friends and family. While we hope and expect our travels in New Zealand will be filled to the brim with memorable adventures and learning, we also think that this extended pre-trip time has been a crucial, indispensable part of the whole plan. Not only did we need time to physically organize ourselves to move across the country/world, wait for visa approval, etc, we also wanted to take time to truly recharge before jumping right into the next thing.
As I was leaving a lovely two weeks in Houston back in November, I had the thought, “did I even need to quit my job and move to another country, or did I just need to spend two weeks in Houston with my friend?” As I feel similar feelings about our time in Rhode Island coming to a close, I am reminding myself that having this time *without* the pressures of work or returning somewhere else is part of what made it so special, relaxing, and generative.
So, as we get closer to our departure date, I wanted to reflect on what I have learned so far from the not-so-simple act of taking two to three months off work. It is such a privilege to be able to take wanted, self-directed time to do this, and it’s something everyone deserves to experience long before retirement. Here’s some reflections organized by theme and how I’ll be carrying them with me into our time in New Zealand.
On life paths:
One of the things I have observed in seeing and catching up with friends these past few months is just how much my peers’ paths are diverging at this stage of my life. Some people are buying houses and starting families, some are finally getting those well-deserved letters after their names after being a student for almost as long as they have been alive, and some of us are going to be living out of a backpack for a year. As I shared about my decision, I felt a lot of self-doubt and a need to justify both the decision I had made, as well as the alternative decisions I could have made. It can be hard not to look at the choices others are making given a similar set of options and wonder if you are on the “right” path. Rebecca Solnit writes in her memoir: “I have no regrets about the roads I took, but a little nostalgia for that period when most of the route is ahead, for that stage in which you might become many things that is so much the promise of youth. . . full of the anxiety and the excitement of choosing, of starting off without quite knowing where you will end up. . . Possibility means that you might be many things that you are not yet, and it is intoxicating when it’s not terrifying.”
I mentioned Satya Doyle Byock’s Quarterlife in a previous post, and I’ll probably never stop referencing it – she describes so well the tension people in this life stage often feel between paths that prioritize stability and those that prioritize meaning. As I shared about my decision to move away from an ostensibly more “stability” oriented path to a more “meaning” oriented one, I felt a lot of my internal questions reflected back to me by almost everyone I talked to in this life stage, regardless of their path. In sharing about the decision, I pushed myself to be really honest about why I was making it. In doing so, I felt much less alone in realizing how we are all navigating competing wants, needs, and pressures around what this stage of life should look like, and the fears we share around the opportunities and experiences that may be gained or lost for the stages after this one. I realized that being stuck and moving forward can sometimes outwardly look like the same thing, depending on who is doing it and whether it’s working for them. This is part of why I felt so much need to justify the alternative paths I could have taken. I can genuinely see why the path that I was on could have been a satisfying one, not only for someone else but even for me, if different parts of myself had prevailed.
For this reason, I’ve tried not to frame this New Zealand journey to myself or others as some kind of wholesale rejection of a more stability-oriented path. In an interview, Byock describes, “The whole point is the search for wholeness, not the pursuit of one side of the spectrum over the other . . . What I try to emphasize is that Quarterlife is not actually about the pursuit of stability in the absence of meaning, or a pursuit of the outer expectations in the absence of the inner desires. If we validate the need for both stability and meaning in Quarterlife, I think we’ll see less suffering and less disorientation all around.” In choosing not to see this year, or any other year, as either/or, I’m trying to move towards that harmony, and I’m grateful for the people in my life who have given me multiple models for what a happy, balanced life can look like that I will carry far beyond this year. My aim is for something like Solnit describes: “You change, if you’re lucky, strengthen yourself and your purpose over time; at best you are gaining orientation and clarity, in which something that might be ripeness and calm is filling in where the naïveté and urgency of youth are seeping away.”
On time and energy:
During these few months, I have had the time and energy to tackle tasks that are forever being demoted to the bottom of the to-do list. Chris’s mom helped me learn to sew a button back on my jeans. I called the manufacturer of my bike pump to get a new valve so I don’t have to replace the whole thing. And Chris and I learned how to make earrings, something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but just didn’t have the “startup” energy to gather the supplies and figure it out. I feel grateful to be picking up little skills that hopefully will feel easier to do even when my schedule is more full again in the future.
On values:
I could write an entire post dedicated just to this, but something that I learned from the challenging period that preceded me making this big change is that I can be values-driven to an extreme. As I go into this next chapter, I want to consider the impact of the things I do that actually matter the most, instead of stressing myself out over small decisions that have very little impact on the things I hope to influence through my lifestyle and choices.
On possessions:
I feel like a 20s right-of-passage for me and my friends has been pruning your possessions, either through moving or through your parents moving/clearing out your childhood bedroom. For me, every pruning period is like pulling teeth. I feel overwhelmed at the amount of stuff I own. I spend hours figuring out how much I can bring with me or how to get rid of usable items without them going into a landfill. Then, I feel doubly overwhelmed by the prospect of giving up sentimental items or having to replace practical items over and over. One of the things I most look forward to about a part of life where I am more settled is getting to own things that become beloved possessions or heirlooms. Until then, I am carrying this “pruning” energy into New Zealand. I’m bringing mostly things I’m prepared to let go of, and to even have gaps in what I’m bringing so that I can thrift things locally.
On partnership:
During these three months of rest, I’ve been able to see so many friends and family members, which is incredibly special to me especially as I’m about to move very, very far away. I feel really grateful to have a partner who, upon me sharing that what I daydreamed about doing first was to go stay with my friend Jeana for three weeks, told me I had to make it happen (along with multiple other trips to see friends since!) He and his family have also generously provided me with a very cozy nest to land for the bulk of this time. Chris has been so unfailingly supportive in whatever I want this time to look like, which has allowed me to both accomplish my personal goals as well as our collective ones.
On quality time while visiting family:
In past years, I’ve been able to work remotely over the holidays, which is really helpful for being able to travel for longer periods of time! However, I was constantly working, and it was often hard to fully switch into having fun after a busy day of work. While I certainly wouldn’t eliminate remote flexibility in the future, I have really valued being able to spend time with both my and Chris’s family without having work looming over me. I’m glad that while I am in New Zealand, I expect to mostly be doing work that is in-person by nature. In a way, there’s a bit of freedom (for me personally at this specific moment) in having a clear restriction where I can’t be working just anywhere.
On routine and weekends:
As much flack “peak bagging” gets, working my way through the New Hampshire 4000 foot mountains every weekend gave me a sense of purpose and accomplishment in the early days of the pandemic when little else felt available. While this “living for the weekend” approach worked for my first few months in Colorado, as I tried to establish a more normal life, I found myself still “reserving” weekend time to be away. As much as I cherish all of the ski days, hikes, and other adventures, I also have observed how having a routine where I live, as simple as picking up a farmshare or a walk in the same park every Saturday morning, makes me feel more connected to the immediate place I live. I hope I can establish some local spots to routinely visit when I get settled in New Zealand.
On local spending:
Although I love being thrifty, I am also often stubbornly resistant to spending money to make my life easier or better. I often draw the line at arbitrary times, suddenly deciding if I buy a little treat, that it will be my last chance to ever stop having a landlord. While spending time in Houston, I loved how my friends are on a by-name basis with their local pop-up baker, from whom we bought as many mochi muffins as she had left every Sunday. On that same corner, they are regulars at their favorite pizza spot. While I already valued supporting local businesses, I want to even further prioritize spending choices that make me feel more connected to the place I actually live, and to do this at an even more local level (my immediate block!)
On mail!:
This isn’t a new realization, but Chris and I just sent a bunch of mail while living here in Rhode Island, and it’s so fun to anticipate your friends receiving it. Hopefully I won’t fall out of the habit and send some postcards back to the States.
On the “examined life”:
I used to have a (supposed) Socrates quote on my wall that said “the unexamined life is not worth living.” In the past few years, I have found that the overexamined life isn’t the best approach either. There is time for reflection, but reflecting all the time and constantly cross-examining everything I’m doing before I’m even done living it is not serving me. While I will always value self-reflection, I’m trying to lean harder into another well-worn adage to be present.
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As for the questions at the beginning of the post, question no longer! We have an answer, and it is January 27th. That’s when we leave the States for New Zealand! We’ve both secured our visas, we’ve been digging into the super helpful travel guides we got for Christmas, and we’ve figured out our first few weeks in New Zealand (via some volunteering through WWOOFing and planning a road/train trip!) We are 90% packed and leave tomorrow (!!) to spend 10 days in California with friends and family before flying out of LA — again, we are so lucky to be able to take our time going into this trip and break it up in a way that feels good. And we are so excited for our trip to begin! By the time you hear from us again, we will have gained handyperson skills (or not) while building a deck for our first hosts in Auckland. Until then!
