For years, I found myself consumed by my role as an experience designer. It filled me with purpose and offered me opportunities make impact. I loved every challenge and professional milestone achieved.
But as time passed, I felt exhaustion creeping into every facet of my professional life, my enthusiasm began to dim and was replaced with fatigue (a big deal! because if you know me, you know how goddamn enthusiastic I can be). Attempting to rekindle the fire, I switched roles, hoping that a fresh change would bring some renewed energy. But after a year in my new job, I could no longer ignore the burnout.
Seven years deep into my career, it was clear — I needed a breather.
The pressure
My initial plan was to take a three-month break, travelling through South America. However, two months in, I realised I needed more time to truly disconnect. I decided to extend my break overseas, which then turned into 8-months of travel across both South and Central America as well as a month of downtime back home in New Zealand with friends and family. The original plan felt like a reasonable hiatus, ‘pause’. But extending this period to nearly a year? That sent shivers of self doubt down my spine. Taking a year off of work, felt like taking a year off from growth and taking away opportunities for career progress.
“I could have been promoted in that time!”
Throughout my career, I’ve always felt this internal pressure to keep pushing myself to climb higher and higher up the career ladder. If I wasn’t growing as a designer, I was wasting time.
I had set myself these high expectations of how I wanted to be performing, trying to match the skillset of those around me. And honestly, looking at it now, that mindset was half of the problem. Too. Much. Pressure.
“Why am I wired this way!?”
As the months went by during my sabbatical, my anxieties surrounding my career break melted away into hot beachy sand I was spending so much time on.
You know how you get your best ideas when you’re taking a shower? Your brain is fully relaxed, away from the environment and finally has the capacity to look at a problem holistically? That was me, spending a week on the beach in Cartagena, Colombia about 3 months into my sabbatical, starting to relax and think more clearly about how valuable this time away was for me.
Prior to my sabbatical, I was too caught up in the daily grind to even think about pausing to reflect on the mental pressures I was putting on myself. I was living by an attitude of growth or stagnation, there was no in-between.
I realised that I was valuing my self-worth by my career success. It was my source of confidence. I was setting bars too high and falling prey to the illusion, that, being in constant struggle is the normal. If you’re not struggling, you’re not growing.
Not only that, but I started to look at my work and life balance much more holistically. It was what I did almost everyday, for years on end with small holiday stints slipped in now and again.
- Work chose the times I could exercise that week.
- Work chose the days or weeks I would be stressed that month.
- Work chose the days I wouldn’t have enough mental capacity to invest in my loved ones.
A shift in perspective
Fast forward to the present, post-sabbatical, I’m in a much healthier headspace. I cherish the time I took off, it allowed me to reassess my career norms, and the undo pressure I was putting on myself. Work no longer occupies the huge mental space that it did previously.
Do I feel like I have fallen behind my peers and forgotten skills? Totally. Does it bother me? Not in the slightest. Not all progress is career progress, and not all growth is calculated. It would be remiss of me if I didn’t touch on the significant personal growth that happened organically during my travels, a kind of evolution that I experienced without even intentionally seeking it.
A new found self acceptance
Being an introvert, my comfort zone has always been in finding solitude or spending time with a small circle of close friends, as opposed to socialising with large groups of people and with many unfamiliar faces. Travel brought about more anxiety and self-doubt, and made me question myself often - “Shouldn’t I enjoy parties and drinking like everyone else does?” This pressure to conform and “fit in” was a constant source of internal conflict and stress for me while away from home, leading to me giving in and putting myself in situations where I really didn’t feel like myself.
Traveling on the cheap is almost perfectly designed for an extroverts lifestyle, hostels especially, and it means >80% of the people you will meet traveling are extroverted. Pre and sometimes during travel, I put myself into many situations that made me feel uncomfortable or anxious, out of fear of not fitting in or feeling the need to please others.
In time my thinking was flipped on it’s head, I have grown to accept that I don’t need to have a drink with others every night if I don’t want to. I’d rather spend some time reading by myself. Why? Because that’s just not what fills my cup and that is 100% normal and fine and it’s perfectly me.
Mental resilience
I actually faced one big reoccurring challenge during my travels. There were three major reoccurring incidents. Three times, I took on multi-day hikes ranging from walking up to 3,400m - 5,200m altitude. All three times, I suffered a ruthless combo of an asthma attack spiralling into an anxiety attack at high altitude.
Pulling myself through those physical and mental headspaces to continue upwards was not easy to say the least. Not only did I need to push through and continue forward on the journey during each hike. But I had to dust of my boots, be a goldfish and prepare myself to do it all over again the next time on the next hike.
But, I kept getting back into the arena, each time learning more about how to handle the situation better and improve. So when it came to the 4th altitude hike, this time in Guatemala, I was ready to face the pain again. I was so proud of myself summiting Acatenango (3,900m) with no issues whatsoever.
Relationship communication
My partner and I thought we had good communication before, but travel really quickly highlighted the gaps and difference in our communication styles. They say “pressure makes diamonds,” but that really doesn’t work when you throw humans, feelings, hunger, and lack of sleep into the mix.
Travelling with a significant other really forces you to learn to communicate better fast; it’s not normal for people to be running on 4 hours of poor sleep, walking 20,000 steps a day, sitting on buses for 9 hours to go from A to B, and repeating this every 3 days AND you can’t speak the native language of the place you are trying to order food from.
The art of mingling
Throughout my travels, I met so many awesome and wildly different people from different backgrounds and with a range of different personalities, and I am fortunate enough to now call them close friends. These meaningful relationships, however, all originated from something seemingly insignificant: small talk.
I used to dismiss small talk as trivial, but during my time away, my perspective changed. I’ve come to appreciate it as an art form, a gateway to deeper connections, regardless of its initial intimidating nature. For anyone grappling with similar apprehensions, I used to watch this video that explains my newfound appreciation for small talk, and it also offers some useful tips.
To conclude
In between all the personal growth and introspection, I was also living the backpacker life to the fullest. Each new city I explored, person I met, and challenge I overcame, was another step on my journey of self-discovery.
Moving forward, I am approaching my work not as a constant battle, but as an exciting journey where growth is welcome (but not mandatory)! Work and career is a part of my life, but it’s not the centre of my life, nor should it be. Returning to work, I am calmer, less obsessed with rapid progress, and more invested in joy. This won’t be the last time I take extended time away from the desk in favour of some ‘me’ time. I just hope the next time I am more proactive.
The pressures I once placed on myself are no longer what I want to live by. Instead, I want to cultivate a mentality of patience, self-compassion, and balance. I’ll finish off my writing with a bunch of photos I love from my time off work, so you can see how much I grew and thrived outside of the office, all while I wore the biggest grin on my face.
It may sound clichéd, but taking that year off taught me the importance of enjoying the journey, not just the destination.
When was the last time you paused to truly assess what makes you happy outside your professional life?
