Ten years ago I took my first paid sabbatical. Though accidental, it was freaking great.
Recently the Mile High FI podcast had Paula Pant and JD Roth on, and they did an episode about sabbaticals. Another dude named Tim Ferriss had this Matt Mullenweg guy on his obscure podcast, and they also spent some time talking sabbaticals. As I’m the sort of guy who would push past his friends so he could be first to jump off a cliff, figured I’d throw in my two cents. I took like three unconventional sabbaticals during my working years, and some would argue I’m on a super long one right now. Maybe I know some stuff.
To do some more not-humble bragging, my former profession was not known for being flexible or allowing people to take extended time off. Yet somehow I was able to get months off at a time during my 15 years on the job. It was pretty simple really:
- First Sabbatical: I got shot while serving a search warrant, and then proceeded to shoot the guy who done shot me. In addition to having to take time off to recover medically (only got shot in the arm, with few complications), I also had to take the dictated time off to clear all the legal hoops before returning to duty.
- Second: Knocked up my wife, and then poof! 9 months later I got 12 weeks FMLA leave. Easey peasey.
- Third time: Wouldn’t you know it, knocked her up again! Another 12 weeks paid time off, thank you very much.
Now I wouldn’t recommend trying to get shot and then shooting someone as the preferred technique in securing a sabbatical, especially if you’re not a cop. Even if you are a cop, probably not a great avenue to pursue. I just stumbled into such an incident by chance; while the time off was nice, it’d be best to not get shot/shoot anyone again. And while pregnancy (of yourself or your partner) may be a somewhat more accessible option, taking care of a newborn isn’t considered “restful“. Most people focus on rest as a priority during their sabbaticals, so this technique is out. And as for learning from experiences, those first few months of progeny care are a haze, so I don’t have anything of value to relay. But I did learn some shit on that first one.
Again, I was lucky. My gunshot was about as vanilla as they come. I was only in the hospital for a day, and just had to get some minor surgery to get things working again. Took about three or four months before I got full strength back, but after the first week I was cleared to do just about anything moderately physical that didn’t involve use of the injured arm. Such restriction ruled out work, but I could drive, walk, and a bunch of other normal stuff. I’ve seen friends take years to come back on full duty after worse gunshots, and I’ve known a few that lived yet never were able to return. And then there’s those that died. So, yeah…I’m thanking my lucky stars.
Where I was back then
It was also a perfect time for me to take a sabbatical. I’d been on the job for seven years, and had been going hard all that time. Think I took 5 days off in a row once before getting clipped. I wasn’t completely burnt out at that point, but I could feel the crazy work pace taking its toll. Also, I was about two years into this whole FIRE thing. Thanks to roots in the Dave Ramsey world, I was a few months away from paying my house off, and had a hefty emergency fund. So I wasn’t worried about money. And I was also primed to try out this Early Retirement thing.
Remember the FIRE community from 10 years ago? Back then, the main idea was to go hardcore frugal so you could retire as soon as fucking possible. This really resonated with me-not the retiring as soon as possible, but being hardcore frugal. Primarily for the sheer challenge of it, and also because it was so counter-culture. I love doing extreme (and sometimes stupid) shit for no good reason, and this was a new way to push myself. But I wondered about the Retire Early thing….back then I still enjoyed my job, so what would I do if I left it? This accidental sabbatical was to be a trial run of me not doing shit. Would I like not working? Or would I go crazy and decide I should work until I die? Would I catch up on It’s Always Sunny? Yes, no, and yes.
What did I do?
Well for like three days I took vicodin and stared at the ceiling. That got kinda boring, and I’ve seen the end of the line for opiate addicts. Ain’t pretty. Went cold turkey and switched to ibuprofen. Luckily I hadn’t gotten addicted yet, so I didn’t have to deal with withdrawal. But as I emerged from that funk, I realized I had to figure out what I was going to do all day. This didn’t stress me; I bathed in the warm knowledge that I had a couple of months to figure that out. So I focused on the immediate things:
- Working out. Couldn’t use the one arm, so the squat rack and free weights in my garage were out. Got me a month by month membership at the big box gym nearby, and started hitting the stairmaster and cable machines. This got me out of the house, which was nice. I worked out an hour a day, which was the same as I’d done pre-sabbatical, but the new location of it helped me enjoy the time off more. Variety is the spice of life or something.
- Dry firing. For those of you who don’t know, one of the best ways to train with a firearm is to unload it and practice pulling the trigger while maintaining perfect form. You can also practice a lot of different shooting techniques while doing so. It’s sorta like doing katas or whatever, and it’s meditative as well. Before sabbatical, I’d do this weekly. During, I was at it every day for 30-90 minutes. I wanted to make sure I could use my uninjured arm by itself to competently employ my various boom sticks. Having received death threats from the crime family whom the guy I shot was associated with was motivating in this arena.
- Reading. Because books are magical!
- TV: Humor is the best medicine, and It’s Always Sunny delivered. Extended viewing got boring after a few solid days of vegging out. I then dialed it back to 30-60 minutes a day. This led me to expand my horizons into….
- Math! Oh man, this was my favorite part. I almost failed out of high school because of my poor math performance. I used to hate it. But then I got into explosive breaching, long range marksmanship, and the FIRE world. Realizing all these numbers had a purpose, I fell in love. All those pursuits required some simple algebra, and a little trig. Really I was just plugging numbers into a formula, but I didn’t understand what was going on behind it all. So I used my time off to start from scratch at mathisfun.com , and worked my way from kindergarten to high school level. My house back then had a big wall I’d made a blackboard out of; I spent hours doing 10 digit long division for the sheer pleasure of it. Having never made it past geometry in school, this made me giddy.
- Grad School. At the time I was in my second year of this part time academic pursuit. Some professors had listed optional reading in the back of the syllabus as an afterthought; I dug into all of that, and then moved on to reading the sources referenced in whatever journal articles were related to my current courses. From this I started to try and piece together the prevalent trends, and this helped deepen my understanding. This increased my curiosity; I quickly became the annoying older student who asked about a million questions during class.
Tranquility
After about a week, I settled into a relaxing routine of waking up, getting coffee, working out, and then hitting the math. Next I’d make lunch, then dry fire while listening to Lady Gaga, BLS or similar. Before dinner I’d dive into my grad school stuff, and go to class if need be. After dinner I’d watch TV with my girlfriend, and then read myself to sleep. Ahhhhhhh. So nice.
The peace snuck up on me, and it felt like I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. A blissful two months.
Before I knew it, my arm was okish, and the various levels of review cleared my shooting. Back to work motherfucker! As this loomed closer, I had mixed feelings. I was really enjoying my time off, and had little desire to leave behind my life of leisure. On the other hand, I wanted to get back on the horse and prove to myself I could still do my job after getting shot. There were some interesting professional opportunities on the horizon pulling me back, and the math said if I just slugged it out for five or so more years I could quit forever and never again have to change out of my jammies.
I went back. It was fine, and I was pleasantly surprised to experience zero psychological issues upon my return. While I threw myself back into work with the same amount of professional vigor, I noticed that something had changed. I still brought motivation to work, but now had to deliberately get myself going. Perhaps my few months off had got me out of the habit of working, and I noticed a subtle longing for my eventual return to the slug life.
Lessons: Learned.
Stir Crazy/Drinking
Like other physical professions, plenty of my coworkers had experienced an unexpected sabbatical due to injury. Thankfully most weren’t as dramatic as a gunshot; more along the line of torn rotator cuffs, ACLs, etc. It was pretty common for someone to be out for months at a time at least a couple of times during their career. As we sat around the squad room, some of those who’d been off for a month or so would regale us with how they’d gone stir crazy after the first week and couldn’t wait to return. Having heard this before my unplanned time off, I worried that I’d be in the same boat. Instead I was clear on the other side of the spectrum; longing for the day when I left the job behind for good.
Look, I bet some reasons for those coworkers going stir crazy were innate. But I noticed that those who didn’t like their time off had spent it watching TV and drinking. Hell, that could have been me. Luckily I went proactive with my mental health years before my time off. I learned from Grossman’s excellent book On Combat that a few days post-almost getting killed, the human body is especially susceptible to uppers and downers. Adrenaline and other fight or flight chemicals spike during a conflict, and effectively rub down the receptors in one’s brain making a single drink feel like three or four. Might be fun for a bit, but the depressive boomerang effect can be a real bitch.
So I stayed off the sauce, having already tempted fate with the prescribed painkillers. I think this had an unplanned effect on the quality of my sabbatical. Being sober made it a lot easier to get curious about fun new intellectual pursuits and truly enjoy the relaxing life that is the world without work. I could see how getting into a cycle of drinking and excessive caffeine could have easily knocked me down an anxiety/depression spiral which I’d later label as having gone “stir crazy”. If you set off on a sabbatical, planned or otherwise, I highly recommend dialing back the drink.
Reframe
At the time, the FIRE community was pretty anti-work, or at least heavy into extolling the merits of not working. And some of this rubbed off on me, despite me mostly enjoying my job at the time. As I said above, I noticed other coworkers despise being off for extended periods. I’ve noticed this in other trades, even though such instances are nearly a given in physical jobs and/or those where furloughs are common. Having the FIRE inspired reframe to actually enjoy my time off was huge. Others that work jobs like I did could benefit from looking forward to and enjoying the unpredictable time off when it comes instead of dreading it.
A lot of the people I know who have physical jobs also have two kinds of hobbies; physically demanding ones, and absolutely sedentary ones. Like wakeboarding and watching football games. When they get injured, they go nuts because they can’t wakeboard, and watching TV gets boring pretty quick. And if they get furloughed, their expensive active hobbies are out. FIRE and some previous experience prepared me for my unexpected sabbatical.
Back in the good ‘ole deprivation days, a big FIRE theme was to ruthlessly look at your hobbies, and figure out a way to get similar fulfillment from cheaper options. This is what got me out of motorcycles and skydiving and into mountain biking. Someone who has a good chance of getting furloughed would be wise to do the same. Working towards Financial Independence wouldn’t hurt either. Way easier to enjoy time off if you’re not worried about missing a few paychecks.
No matter how cheap your hobby is, if it’s physical you can’t do it when you’re injured. Luckily, I had planned for that in an indirect way. During my time in the Army and later as a Cop, I saw that in many circumstances you’d be lucky if you got killed. There were worse outcomes; the dude who trained me is a triple amputee, which drove this point home. When alone with my thoughts, my favorite way to pass the time is to plan for the worst. So I’ve probably spent hundreds of hours thinking that through. My go to plan is to study particle physics. If I suck too much at that, I’ll work my way into a less rigorous academic field. Maybe criminal justice.😉 Though I can’t hold a candle to Stephen Hawking’s smarts, at least he’s shown that if you end up with similar physical limitations you can still get into some cool shit.
Having thought all this out beforehand made the limitations associated with my relatively minor injury easy to deal with. I finally got a chance to focus most of my attention on intellectual stuff. And it was fun!
What this post is really about
I’d love to say the gradual change of course in this post was intentional, but really I fully intended to write about sabbaticals and about halfway through realized I was writing about something else: Even if you don’t have a physical job, there’s still a good chance you’ll be off injured while you’re in accumulation mode. I hear carpal tunnel is a bitch, or maybe you’ll blow a knee out in your curling league.
While you can’t exactly predict when you’ll get this unexpected sabbatical, you can predict that if you don’t prepare for it, it will suck. Some fireman once told me that if it’s predictable, it’s preventable. Knowing is half the battle, or whatever. I was fortunate in that I’d inadvertently prepared to make the most of my unplanned time off. Hopefully you can learn from my unintended success.
To sum up, this seemed to work:
- Being in a good financial spot. While off on medical, I missed out on a lot of overtime. And if medical complications arose, eventually I would have been switched to unpaid time off. But I didn’t care, as I’d found this FIRE stuff and had already got my shit together. You’re probably in the same spot. Good job, you.
- Developing mentally active interests which don’t require physical effort. If your plan is to binge watch SG-1, you’re going to be bored as hell by the time Daniel returns in season 7.
- Having alternate ways to stay healthy. Before getting shot, I did olympic lifts and ran. For the months afterwards, I had to stick to the stairmaster and some cable stuff. Still way better than not moving at all.
- Staying off the booze. While I did this because I’d learned it was essential after critical incidents, this made my overall time off much better. Anyone could probably benefit from the same during time off; take a break from the drink, weed, PCP, etc.
- Most importantly, reframing my time off injured as an unexpected sabbatical. I could have easily slid into being pissed at the guy who shot me, the state of the criminal justice system, and the world in general. Instead I was excited to try out not working and grateful for a break. Vacations are way more fun than an unwanted break. But they’re both really just stories you tell yourself about the same thing. Why not use the story that makes your life better?
There you go. If you are a human who is employed in some manner, you may get an unexpected vacation some day. Hope yours ends up being an accidental sabbatical like mine, filled with enjoyment, rest, and self discovery. Maybe it’ll even be a nice test drive of Early Retirement. To paraphrase Bob Ross, you can turn your shit show into a happy accident, just like me. 🙂
…is there supposed to be two posts exactly the same? or are there some easter eggs in the second copy that I’m a bit too lazy to look for at the moment?
Lol, no I just suck at interneting. Should be fixed now. Thanks!
Really interesting post. There might have been times when I said I’d give my right arm to get out of work, but I definitely never meant it literally.
By a rough reckoning I’ve had about 60 months off in the last fifteen years, including summers and Christmas breaks, actual research sabbaticals, and significant unpaid leave I’ve taken. I’ve never, ever been anxious to get back to work, even during the periods that I’ve really enjoyed my job.
About the people that go stir-crazy, they’re probably the single biggest thing that got me interested in early retirement. When I started my job I was the youngest around and I often had lunch with people much older than me. Some were good colleagues and interesting people. Unfortunately, many had cultivated no meaningful interests outside of work, so they just kept coming back year after year, retelling the same work stories, insisting that you listen to them tell you what they watched on TV last night. Eventually they would have a serious medical event, which would force them into a brief and depressing retirement.
Recognizing that I didn’t want to go down this path, early on I decided I’d never let my identity get so tied up with my job that I couldn’t quit, and I’d never put work at the top of the life hierarchy. It’s not a recipe for success if you are ambitious professionally, but for work-life balance, for financial freedom and all the other freedoms that come with that, it was the right call for me.
I’m leaving my job soon and people keep giving me funny looks and asking me what I will do. It’s one of those instances where if someone can ask the question in the first place, they won’t be able to understand the answer.
That’s some pretty solid time off Brian, congrats on pulling that off. It’ll be interesting to see if that time off set you up for a fulfilling and fun retirement. I’m betting it will.
I hear you on the work stories and TV show discussions. It was common for some of us to have long conversations ranging from deep topics to absurd and humorous, but there were usually just as many coworkers that couldn’t talk about anything but work and TV. I’d usually run the other way if I could.
Good on you for consciously deciding to not over identify with your job.
Professional success is weird. I liked to go all in things that directly effected an outcome, but I could never bring myself to care about the political stuff that would have advanced my career. I suppose I was lucky; the pay difference between the top ranks and mine were so small that I didn’t see the point.
I’m assuming in your field you had some big initials behind your name-I can certainly see how easy it would be to get wrapped up with that. Well done on avoiding that trap!
I not only never had a sabbatical (planned or not) during my full-time working career, I never even took more than about two continuous weeks off over a span of more than 25 years. I’ve often wondered: (1) how I’d have have coped with and liked a sabbatical; and (2) if a sabbatical would’ve spoiled me for going back to the old normal. Knowing myself, I think I’d have coped OK. But pre-discovery of FIRE, I’m sure I’d have been freaking out about the finances, and that’d have disabused me of any notion of being spoiled for going back to the old normal. The flipside is that the R&R that’d have come from a sabbatical woulda done me a world of good. I wish there was a way of inventing an alternative universe in which I could play out for real a sabattical during my pre-discovery of FIRE working days. Sigh. In any event, my FIRE life sabbatical has both been fantastic and absolutely spoiled me for going back to a full-time job.
There’s a lot I didn’t mention in this post as it dragged on too long already. One point was that after this sabbatical, I started to take all of my vacation every year(we got about 5 weeks a year), and figured out ways to get more than 2 weeks off in a row off. After this shift of perspective, I couldn’t believe how people tolerated just two weeks off a year. I guess it’s a testament to our work centered society.
On one hand, I have a hard time fathoming how you put 25 years in your profession. On the other hand, I don’t know how the hell people regularly put in 40! Glad you got sooner than that.
Found your blog via Dave @ Accidental Fire, enjoying your anonymous write-ups and looking forward to more as time permits.
Gosh we say “take one for the team” at work from time to time, and while all kinds of sacrificial pain is encompassed, no one I know of has actually been shot and we hope to keep it that way.
Your Item #5 – I’m personally still having trouble swapping “convalescence” for “sabbatical” in my mind, but I respect the reframing!
Thanks! Dave is awesome.
In my old job, there was a subculture which saw getting injured as a positive thing since you got some time off. I suppose I can’t take complete credit for the reframe because of this.
It’s odd, “convalescence” was just not in our lexicon, most at work called it being “off”. People would then have to clarify if they were off on vacation or injury-the two got blurred a bit. I was fortunate to be marinating in the FIRE world, where the term “sabbatical” was common, thus easing the reframe.
Language and its effects on our mindset are an interesting thing to ponder. Reminds me of Ted Chiang’s novella “Story of your Life”, and the excellent film adaptation “The Arrival” which revolve around the effect of language on our perception. Chiang referenced this Vonnegut quote when summing up the novella:
” Stephen Hawking … found it tantalizing that we could not remember the future. But remembering the future is child’s play for me now. I know what will become of my helpless, trusting babies because they are grown-ups now. I know how my closest friends will end up because so many of them are retired or dead now … To Stephen Hawking and all others younger than myself I say: ‘Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and likes you no matter what you are.’ “
Ha – I’m not much for sci-fi, but I have watched Arrival (agreed, quite excellent – and not at all what I was expecting) in addition to leafing through that Ted Chiang collection of stories.
My experience with languages affecting perception is far more mundane (I mean, is there a superpower more mundane than multilingualism?) insofar as it aids peering into the past and future to identify what does and does not change…
I’ve taken a total of two years off of work for various reasons. 6 months in the slammer and 1.5 years traveling the world. The latter was much more fun. In a way sabbaticals refresh you in a way a two week vacation never can. Mine were life changing and made me a better person. But damn dude can’t believe you took a bullet. Talk about deserved time off. I think it’s interesting that you had your sabbatical while knowing of FIRE. As you say, I’m sure that gave you a little sneak peek into the life beyond work and definitely changed your perspective.
When I was a carpenter I got injured quite often on the job. Mostly minor stuff I powered through, but I used to be super weary about getting injured on my time off having fun because my body was pretty much my pay check, if I couldn’t work physically I would have been fired. On another note, my previous company held out lucrative 3 month sabbaticals for 5 years of employment. I wish more companies could get on board with that. That defiantly would do some to curb burnout and help with employee retention.
Nice thought provoking post.
Thanks!
I’ve only spent a night in the clink; I’d much rather get shot(especially if it’s a minor GSW like mine was)than do any more time in there.
I hear you about your body being your paycheck; though our union had some strong protection, if you were injured too long they’d eventually bounce you. That was one of the reasons I was so drawn to FIRE-having months of expenses saved up made it way less stressful being off injured. Figured if I couldn’t return physically, at least I had a long runway to find something else.