What a Sabbatical Really Feels Like (And Why You May Not Know What Comes Next)
- Pause to Play
- 2 days ago
- 8 min read
The Fantasy of a Sabbatical vs Reality
We love the fantasy version of a sabbatical.
In that version, you wake up early, but in a poetic way. You journal every morning. You read profound books. You take long walks, have beautifully structured thoughts, and slowly transform into a calmer, wiser person with excellent boundaries and very little screen time.
It makes a great story.
And in many ways, this story was actually true for me.
I do wake up early quite often. Not every day, because I am still a human being and not a mountain monk, but often. I have read a lot of smart, meaningful books—the kind that stay with you long after you close them and quietly change the way you think. I take long walks. I travel. I see new places. I have mornings that feel spacious and calm in a way normal working life rarely allows.
That gentler architecture of mornings is something I wrote about more directly in My Morning Ritual: The 20/20/20 Rule Practice That Changed Everything.
So no, my sabbatical is not a total rejection of the fantasy.
But it is not exactly that fantasy either.
Because alongside the beautiful, thoughtful, almost cinematic parts, there are also very ordinary days. Grocery shopping in the middle of the week. Laundry. Doctor’s appointments. Answering messages. Deciding what to eat. Sitting with coffee for longer than necessary. Reading ten pages of a brilliant book and then immediately getting distracted by the extremely urgent question of whether I should find a bakery.
That is the real shape of it - what a sabbatical really feels like: not a polished transformation, but a real life lived at a slower, more honest pace.
What a Sabbatical Really Feels Like Day to Day
Maybe that is also why Philosophy of Slowness: What I Learned When I Paused still feels so true to me: slowness is beautiful, but it is also ordinary, practical, and deeply human.
Not one grand transformation. Not a clean, polished reinvention. More like a strange and beautiful mix of freedom, movement, stillness, reflection, uncertainty, and very regular human life.
If you want the less polished version of that reality, I wrote more honestly about it here:
What Actually Changes During a Sabbatical
Before I took this break, I think part of me imagined that time off had to become something. A project. A reinvention. A clear narrative arc. Ideally something I could later explain in one elegant paragraph and make sound both soulful and highly intentional.
Instead, what I got was something much less performative and much more valuable.
I got my life back in smaller pieces.
And I got something else too: a kind of freedom I had almost forgotten existed.
I have traveled a lot during this sabbatical. I have seen places I had never seen before. I have moved through cities and landscapes that used to live only in the “one day” part of my mind.
If you’re still figuring out whether you need a break, I shared the moment I realized I couldn’t keep going like this — you can read it HERE.
Not sure if you need a career break yet?
The moment I realized I couldn’t keep going like this.
The Freedom You Don’t Expect From a Sabbatical
But what changed me was not only where I went.
It was how I went.
I could leave when I wanted. I could stay longer if I liked a place. I could change my mind. I could book something without turning it into an administrative side quest involving annual leave, calendar gymnastics, and a faint sense of corporate apology. At times, that freedom took very real, physical forms.
I walked through one of the longest canyons in Europe, under the kind of heat and silence that forces you to slow down whether you want to or not. I cycled up a volcano, not because I had planned it months in advance, but because one day I simply could. I spent more time than ever before in the mountains I love, returning not just for the view, but for the feeling of being there without having to rush back.
That kind of movement-based clarity is something I explored further in Hiking for Mental Health: Mountain Walks Reset Stress and Via Ferrata Climbing: How the Mountain Builds Focus & Freedom.
And yet, even those moments were not separate from the rest of it. They were part of the same rhythm.
That kind of freedom felt almost suspicious at first.
You mean I can just... go somewhere?
On a Tuesday?
And stay until Friday? Or Sunday? Or longer?
Without writing an out-of-office message that sounds both professional and vaguely guilty?
Revolutionary.
Travel feels completely different when you are not trying to squeeze wonder into three approved days off. You notice more. You rush less. You stop treating every trip like a compressed performance of joy. You are no longer trying to extract maximum meaning from 48 hours and a carry-on bag.
You can just arrive somewhere and let it be what it is.
That changed travel for me.
And I also started seeing familiar places differently.
Not everything required distance. Not everything required a plan.
There were moments when I stayed close to what I already knew and still found something new in it.
A different light. A slower pace. A version of the same place I had never really allowed myself to experience before.
It turns out you do not always have to go far to be surprised by something again.
But what stayed with me just as much was the opposite: I could also go anywhere, and sometimes I chose not to go anywhere at all.
And that mattered.
There were moments when I could have booked the next trip, picked the next city, chased the next view, and instead I stayed where I was. Not because I had to. Not because I was being sensible. Not because I had run out of options.
But because I wanted to.
I stayed a little longer. I walked the same streets again. I returned to the same cafe. I let the day remain simple.
That was new too.
Not just the freedom to go anywhere, but the freedom to say, actually, nowhere today.
It turns out that is also a luxury. That quieter choice has a lot in common with The Radical Act of Doing Nothing: Strategic Laziness (Niksen), which made me appreciate stillness in a completely different way.
A lot of this sabbatical looks good from the outside. New places. Early mornings. Underlined books. Long walks. Spacious days. The kind of life that makes people say, “Wow, you’re really using this time well.”
And to be fair, I am.
But not because every day is extraordinary.
I am using this time well because, for the first time in a long time, I am living at a more human pace.
And I think that distinction matters, especially because from the outside a life can look full and meaningful long before it actually feels that way on the inside, which is something I wrote about in Why You Feel Empty (Even When Your Life Looks Good).
Some days are full of novelty and movement. Some are full of reading, writing, and thinking. Some are deeply ordinary. Some feel light and expansive. Some feel empty in a way that is not bad, just unfamiliar. Some give me clarity. Some give me nothing except rest, which turns out not to be nothing at all.
And I know that even this kind of space is not something everyone gets.
I am aware that this kind of time is a privilege.
Most people do not get to step out of their routines like this. Most people do not get months to think, walk, read, and question what comes next.
I did not take that lightly.
And at the same time, I learned that having space does not remove uncertainty. It just makes it louder. When that space gets loud, I often think of Why Silence Feels Uncomfortable (And How to Get Used to It), because quiet does not always soothe you before it reveals you.
At that point, I didn’t have a clear plan for what a career break should look like.
Later, I put together the career break tips I wish I had known before.
The Part You Can’t Plan
And then there is the other part.
The part I also write about here.
The fear. The uncertainty. The very real question of what happens next.
Because the truth is: I am still in this sabbatical. I am not writing from the neat final chapter where everything suddenly makes sense and I return to the world with a beautiful lesson, a better haircut, and a five-step framework.
I am still in the middle of it.
I still have days when I wonder what my life will look like after this. What I will choose. What I will return to. What I will leave behind. Whether I am building something new or simply standing in the space after something old.
I would love to tell you I have a clean answer.
I do not.
Apparently, sabbaticals are rude like that.
Maybe that is also why Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail — and How to Actually Bridge the Gap Between Pause and Play still feels relevant to me: life rarely changes in one elegant arc, and almost never on perfect days.
They give you perspective, freedom, books, walks, beautiful places, and the occasional existential plot twist, but they do not always hand you a final roadmap with labeled sections and bullet points.
Sometimes they give you something far less convenient and much more honest:
space.
Space to notice. Space to question. Space to stop pretending you know exactly where your life is going when, in fact, you are still listening for what feels true.
That has been one of the hardest parts for me.
And also one of the most important.
Because I am beginning to see that this season is not only about rest, or travel, or reflection, or even joy. It is also about learning how to stay with uncertainty without immediately trying to solve it like a problem in a meeting.
A former high-functioning adult nightmare, frankly.
Somewhere in this slower rhythm, something in me is changing. Not through one dramatic breakthrough. Not through a cinematic epiphany on a mountain. Not through becoming a brand-new person with a fully formed life plan and a wise caption ready to go.
Just through repetition.
Through mornings that belong to me. Through books that give language to things I had felt but not named. Through walks long enough for thoughts to settle. Through the freedom to leave. Through the freedom to stay. Through the humbling realization that I can be deeply grateful for this time and still not know exactly where it is leading me.
Maybe that is what this sabbatical really is.
Not a perfect escape. Not a polished transformation. Not a glamorous intermission between one impressive chapter and the next.
But a real life, lived more consciously.
A life with beauty and boredom. Adventure and repetition. Freedom and fear. Movement and stillness. Moments of peace, and moments of not knowing what on earth comes next.
That is what I am actually doing during my sabbatical.
I am traveling. I am reading deeply. I am walking for hours. I am seeing new places. I am staying longer when I want to. I am staying put when I want to. I am letting life be both bigger and simpler.
And I am also living with the question of what comes next.
Not perfectly. Not always gracefully. But honestly.
Maybe that is enough for now.
And maybe that is exactly the point.
Continue the Pause to Play journey.
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