#13 No I didn’t travel on my sabbatical

Yet I found my way by not going anywhere

Williamsburg bridge

Quit

I quit. 

At the age of 27.

Not because I’m financially free, I’m just tired of work. 

I went to work, but no longer felt connected to my work results anymore.  

I went home, but no longer felt nourished after resting anymore.

I lived life, but no longer felt like actually lived it anymore. 

After 2 years of struggle and deliberation I finally decided to quit. Getting another job was out of the picture because I was already a rusted machine cog. Luckily, I had some savings from previous work, so I quit without a backup plan. Call it a gap year, sabbatical or mini-retirement, it’s a period of time that I gave myself to figure out what I want. 

The question

“What do I want” was THE question for me to answer in the sabbatical.

What kind of work do I want to do? What kind of people do I want to be friends with? What kind of life do I want to live? 

To find answers, I naturally searched online for other people’s sabbatical experiences. Some volunteered in third world countries; Some had ayahuasca ceremonies in Peru; Some pursued their real passions and abandoned their previous lives completely. 

As I started arranging for myself these “life-changing experiences”, I found myself in a familiar yet ironic situation. All my life, I've followed the golden path, meeting parents’ expectations and keeping up with my peers.  Even when trying to figure out what I want, I was still looking for well-trodden paths. The further I went down this road, the more detached I felt from my true self.

I was lost, on a well-trodden path.

My way

Maybe, during this sabbatical, I could drift a bit from the golden path. Maybe, I could temporarily stop targeting the “right” answer. Maybe the only “right” way is “my” way.  What if I aimed to be honest with myself — only do work that interests me, be friends with whom I truly admire and spend time on things I always wanted to do? Autonomy and creativity would be my north star. With this goal in mind, I started experimenting with life. 

Work

In my previous role, I was a backend engineer making CRUD APIs. Despite being a capable and responsible team player, I personally couldn’t derive much pride or joy from doing repetitive work as a small fraction of a big system. 

What really gave me energy was solving my own problems and building whatever came to my mind, just like painting or writing. I was motivated by this vision, learning new technologies and building things end to end. For the first time in years, my GitHub was lightened up with green dots(commits) again. I built web apps for my family’s business, chrome extensions to find interesting classmates in my WoP course, AI agents to help me digest lengthy podcasts, etc. I felt less like a cog in the machine and more like a human, as machines are meant to work, while humans are meant to create.

Social Life

Previously, I only hung out with my colleagues or roommates. My life was a straight line with home and work at the two ends. For a long time, I felt alone with all these weird thoughts and I wondered if there were people like me but have found a way out of the matrix. 

In the quest for similar minds, I started going to meetups for the first time: AI demos, hackathons, co-working events, etc. Meeting a bunch of strangers was dreadful for a socially awkward person like me. Nevertheless these events led me to places I’ve never been before and introduced me to people I never thought existed — creatives who always work on side projects besides the 9-5; writers who have been analyzing and transcending themselves for years. Their presence helped me break free from my mental cage by showing me what’s really possible with work and life.

Hobby

I always wanted to do a million things — make vlogs, record podcasts, become a photographer, take online courses, etc. However I never did those because there were always “more important” things, like making more money, getting that promotion or staying current with AI trends. I never gave myself the permission to indulge in hobbies. 

Now that I've tried most of the things on the list, I found that some were just one-time experiments, but some have stuck with me for long, like writing. Now I write a biweekly newsletter to my friends and families. This new habit not only gave me deeper insights into myself but also connected me with other like-minded people all over the world regardless of race, gender or cultural backgrounds. Hobbies that once were peripheral have now become essential to my identity. 

New life, Old life

Six months into my sabbatical, I haven’t left the city I live in or even my apartment. I am still in the same place doing the same things — coding, writing, working out and eating healthy. But at the same time, it feels different. I enjoy coding more because I am building things I care about. I feel less lonely because I have found many like-minded friends. I stop fantasizing about the million lives I could live or the million things I could do, focusing only on things I could persist in.

No, I didn't travel on my sabbatical. Yet I found my way by not going anywhere. I saw life slowly changing towards the direction I wanted — a path full of creativity and autonomy with many kindred spirits walking besides me. The gems I’ve found along the way give me confidence to continue without waiting for any sabbatical God to tell me I’m on the right track.