Author’s Note: I quit my job at Ebsta to focus on a career sabbatical. They’re vague and somewhat misunderstood. This memoir sets out to clarify my rationale and the factors leading to this decision. Committing these words to paper helps clarify this abstract concept to myself. In sharing, I believe these words may help others similarly disillusioned with their career.
On Defining a Career Sabbatical
By definition: “A career sabbatical is an extended period of leave from one’s job or professional career, typically ranging from several months to a few years. Unlike a regular sabbatical often associated with academia and focused on professional development, a career sabbatical is broader and can be taken for various personal or professional reasons. These reasons might include travel, pursuing further education, engaging in volunteer work, starting a personal project, or simply taking a break to focus on personal well-being.
Career sabbaticals can be paid or unpaid and may be negotiated with an employer or undertaken independently. The goal is often to return to the career with renewed energy, a fresh perspective, or new skills that can benefit the individual and their employer.”
The circumstances for taking a career sabbatical are unique to every individual. Why do they take it, what they believe will happen and what they intend to do varies greatly. This is one perspective on stepping back from the well-trodden career ladder.
On the School Curriculum
At 16 years old, all British teenagers face the first significant decision of their lives. Do they leave school to pursue full-time employment, or do they seek further education?
For more than a decade prior, we lived out our days following the thinly veiled guard rails laid out by our parents, society and elders. The school curriculum maintains a 12-year track that guides us through childhood and into our teenage years.
Then, at 16 years of age, that cosy blanket is pulled from us, and we are exposed to the cold, harsh reality of adulthood as we face the first major decision of our lives. At such a tender age, the gravity of deciding what path to take in life is scarcely detectable. We ask ourselves, ‘What do we want to do with our lives?’ The answer to that previously in the Western world was to follow in the footsteps of our fathers and mothers.
But in the modern Western world, individualism permeates society. We have the freedom of will to do as we wish and the freedom of speech to say as we please. When combined with technology, we absorb more knowledge and have more choices than ever before in human history. The confines of geography, gender, and class no longer apply as they once did.
The opportunities ahead of us are boundless, yet so much choice is paralysing. Our formative years bear a significant influence on the choices we make. That time is split between learning about our external world (our language, history, culture, geography, and so on), and the developing of our internal world.
Our internal ‘self’ is intricate and constantly evolving. Lying beneath all our thoughts, feelings, and decisions lies the complex value and belief system that provides the foundation for how we navigate our lives.
Some are more in tune with their self than others. Some have such unyielding self-belief that they will forge their path regardless of what others might think or say. Others lack such conviction, and when we lack self-belief, we retreat to what humans have always done for millennia; we turn to our peers and elders for an example to follow.
In doing so at this critical juncture, we choose to follow in the path of others instead of cutting a path of our own.
This summarises the path I have followed for a decade.
On University
My peers set the example for the path I would follow, and it has shaped me like a rock carried downstream by the river.
I studied for a degree because it promised to lead to work where I could make a meaningful difference. Instead, it led to a hollow industry driven by money, just as so many are.
I reached this conclusion early, yet I completed the degree because that is what all my peers were doing. There was no second thought as to whether the degree was even what I wanted.
I left university with a piece of paper sold as the gateway to a better future. But as I stood, paper in hand, I found the gateway to just be a figure of my imagination. I had followed my peers and progressed along the path, yet I still had no clarity on where I wanted the path to lead.
So at 21, I stood in the same place as I had at 16; no purpose, no direction, and still no means of earning a living.
Sticking to what I knew, I looked at the decisions of others for an example to follow. Either they continued their path into a career, or they stepped back to take a gap year. The latter is a conscious decision to ‘find one’s self’ —a chance to step back and re-calibrate before committing to the next step.
I lacked self-belief for the latter, so I continued following the career path without a sense of direction or purpose. For a decade, I navigated the ladder, jumping from job to job every few years, hoping to find meaning.
On the Career ‘Ladder’
When transitioning into adulthood, some of us stumble across a suitable lifestyle. We meet people we like. We find a place we are happy to call home. We spend our time doing simple things that make us smile. We set down roots that grow stronger and ever more gnarled as the years pass. There is never a need to question, ‘What do we want from this life?’ because the answer finds us.
When we don’t find those answers, we live an unsettled existence. We struggle to meet like-minded people. We live in places that enable us to earn a living, but we never consider them our home. We occupy our time with busyness and end our days feeling tired, hollow and alone.
When living with such unease, a career offers an escape. It drip-feeds a sense of fulfilment and distraction.
It showed me that I enjoyed solving problems and learning new skills. I delivered results that my bosses and peers patted me on the back for. I climbed the ladder higher, imitating those I looked up to, imagining that the next step would provide the meaning I was searching for.
I moved to the big city because that is what successful people did. I took jobs in industries because that is the path they had followed. I learned the skills they had developed because they appeared necessary to move further up the ladder.
Logic dictated every move I made, and so much of that logic was based on the example set by others.
By following a career ladder, you follow a path dictated by others. Some of us appreciate being told what to do; it’s simple and effortless. However, for others, it lays out a blueprint that does not suit what we have to offer.
A career path is magical because it creates this belief that you are constantly moving forward. There is always another achievement to work towards, always another star to aim for.
But how often do we ask ourselves, ‘Why do I follow this path?’ Do we follow it to feel good about ourselves? Do we follow it because that’s what our friends and our peers do? Do we do it to provide for our family?
I followed the path for so long on the back of the example set by others. As I approached the imaginary juncture of my thirties, I stopped to ask why I followed it. Upon doing so, I had no answer. The consequences of my decisions at 16 and 21 years old stared back at me. I blindly followed a path with no understanding of why and based my decisions on the actions of others rather than on myself.
I had followed a well-trodden path, finding success, wealth, and a small clutch of close relationships. It satisfies all your basic needs for warmth, shelter, food and water. It allows you to save for a home and retirement so that one day, you can finally reach the end of the path and start to appreciate your life. It comes with perks and bonuses to accumulate pretty trinkets for your family and yourself. As you progress with every step, you experience the fleeting flash of achievement, buy new trinkets for another brief moment of satisfaction, and then set about climbing to the next rung of the ladder.
Despite the benefits, this path has never felt my own.
On the Untrodden Path
I believe that when you follow the path of others, you also follow their values, their beliefs, their principles and their ambitions. Sometimes we get lucky and find we align with these. In those instances, their path blurs into our own.
But when we don’t find that alignment, we have a choice. We can continue to follow in the hope that one day it might get better, or we can choose to step off the path, stop following, and instead plot our course.
I set in motion a plan to do the latter 12 months ago.
To break from the career path, I am now undertaking a career sabbatical as defined by the beginning of this memoir.
This decision is my own. I want to challenge the perception I had created by following that well-established route. I believe that by doing so, the long-embedded neural pathways will retreat, and new ones will form; ones aligned to my self.
Not only is this the first step in choosing my own path, I can now answer why I am choosing this untrodden path: to find a fulfilling path true to my self.
The path ahead is shrouded with mist, just as it was at 16 and 21 years of age. Rather than mindlessly following others through that mist to a destination I can never call my own, instead I am choosing to navigate the unknown based on my values, principles and beliefs.
On Appreciating the Present Path
Stepping back from a career path is akin to tending a garden. The conditions we have so carefully maintained are exposed to the elements. Long-established trees will inevitably wither and die. In their stead, we create space for new life to flourish. Like a gardener, we may then choose which seeds to tend to, and which to leave to the will of nature.
What matters is not what these seeds become; it is the act of watering.
We tend to the saplings based on their present vitality, resilience and resonance. Some we will watch as they bloom into great oaks, whilst others we will allow to wither back into the soil.
Only through the act of watering can we see what the seeds of our ideas will become.
If we never choose to take up the watering can and tend to our garden, the fate of those ideas will forever be confined to our imagination. With time, they, too, wither, returning to the soil, having never been given the chance to see the light of day.
It’s time to see what emerges from the soil.