Why you should not take a sabbatical

Nadia Woodhouse
Aug 25, 2017 · 4 min read
Las Salinas del Maras, Peru. Image: Nadia Woodhouse

One year ago I left my fulfilling job, cosy flat and brilliant mates at home in Melbourne. I landed in Costa Rica and have worked my way up to California — and back down to Peru. Along the way have thought about whether I did the right thing. While it sounded like a magical journey, at 31, backpacking your way solo through central America without ‘a plan’ can be mildly confronting. Because:

1. You’ll burn a hole through your savings account.

And in exchange for all that money you’re frittering away, you get to see magical places, meet wonderful people and take an opportunity as and when it presents itself. You might get to go to yoga retreats in Mexico, a surf school in Costa Rica, a 4 week spanish immersive in Guatemala and a 7 day art festival in the Nevada desert. You’ll embrace your inner child by trying all those things you were too scared to try and often you fail forward into success. The amount of times I have ‘failed forward’ into a massive wipeout on a wave or in an awkward exchange in Spanish are now too many to count.

Burning Man, Nevada. Image: Nadia Woodhouse

2. You’ll sit on a beach/yoga mat/in a forest wondering what you are doing with your life.

But all that spare time opens up space for creativity — for painting and drawing and singing and dancing and surfing and enveloping yourself in history and culture and food and art. All the good stuff you know you should be incorporating into every day life and that you vow to do as soon as you get home.

Macchu Picchu, Peru. Image: Nadia Woodhouse

3. You sold all your stuff and you wear the same clothes all the time.

And you’re embracing a lifestyle of minimalism. You don’t need to buy anything because it won’t fit in your backpack. Your ecological footprint is the lightest it’s ever been because you are interwoven into the sharing economy, you’re bus-ing, Airbnb-ing and uber-ing everywhere. You’re smiling at strangers more than ever before, because you now have all the time in the world to get struck up in conversations, learn more about a culture that was hitherto alien and maybe even make lifelong friends.

La Punta, Puerto Escondido, Mexico. Image: Pulpo Salinas

4. You’ll watch your mates get promoted, grow their businesses, and settle down.

You’ll freak out about stalling your career or putting it on the shelf. Your FOMO levels are at an all time high seeing your Insta-friends throw dinner parties and find their dream houses, meanwhile you’re just trying to find the nearest ‘baños’ or wifi. But you don’t have any any bills to pay, you’re unencumbered and you’re untethered.

You get up and go to a new surf break or a new country when you feel like it. You find like minded travel buddies and you (finally) get to read fiction and at some point your find that you’ve squeezed your way out of your previous groupthink bubble to develop new perspectives on doing business, and on being successful. So the FOMO dissipates when you realise you’re only adding to your own success by investing in your most valuable asset. You.

So if these reasons don’t turn you off the wanderlust, and you have a supportive work place and the opportunity to go, then GO. And here’s some tech to help along the way:

- Coursera / Lynda: learn just about anything from places like Harvard and Princeton. I enrolled in Buddhism and modern psychology, and took a course in linguistics.

- Maps.me app: offline maps and directions, allowing you to track your journey as you go

- Conjuverb / SpanishDict: two apps that have helped me make less of a bumbling fool of myself trying to speak Spanish in Latin America

- Audible: pretty much any book you can think of, read to you in dulcet tones

- Headspace: when you need to find a little stability and calm

- XE.com: figure out your currency conversions quickly and easily, and get notified of rate conversions

- Kayak, Momondo and HostelWorld apps: for finding the best flight and hotel deals

Epilogue: settling back into corporate life after 12 months on sabbatical is both challenging and rewarding — stay tuned for part 2…

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