Burnout and Resume Gaps: A Love Letter to My Sabbatical
In 2019, I quit a job and a terrible manager and took several months off to rest, recharge, and recover.
I remember that decision being fraught with anxiety and shame: It felt like quitting a job like this was supposed to be embarrassing and an earmark of personal failure.
I had a lot of difficult and teary nights grappling with what, at the time, I thought of as my descent into total failure before and after leaving. If I couldn’t keep a job–a job I had quit by choice but also because it was a terrible fit and an equally terrible management culture–then what value did I have? How was I a worthwhile partner, friend, or person?
At the insistence of my partner, I took a personal sabbatical after quitting that job. I remember sitting at the bar of Empirical Brewing (RIP) wrestling with my anxiety as we discussed what my next steps would be.
Hours after quitting my job.
The plan:
No job searching for at least two months.
Take a solo trip to anywhere I wanted to go.
Stay in therapy.
The anxiety:
Draining our hard-stocked savings.
Putting undue financial pressure on my partner.
Having a resume gap and never finding a job in my field.
Missing out on job opportunities because I wasn’t applying anywhere.
Being purposeless and worthless.
In the end, I begrudgingly took the sabbatical. And I’m incredibly grateful that I did.
I took several months to travel, to reconnect with my creativity, and to process my experience at my former job and the resulting burnout. Burnout that had been a slow flame for the past 10 years, culminating in–what I thought of at the time–a spectacular professional failure.
I also took time to define what I actually wanted—to align my values and needs with my career and my wellbeing. To take what I’d learned over the past decade or so and give myself permission to continue to grow and explore my needs. Permission to not know “what’s next” but instead define that for myself as I progressed.
Burnout starts low and slow.
When I moved to Chicago in 2008, I kicked off what would become my decade of burnout. I worked multiple jobs. I was putting myself through an intensive grad school program. I spent hours commuting by CTA per day. I lived paycheck to paycheck (and sometimes didn’t make it). I struggled to prioritize basic needs (rent, groceries or that electric bill? Sleep? Feeding myself?) into the 24 hours I had each day.
Fifteen years later, I’m realizing now that the tired I felt back then–the missed alarms, the arriving late to work, the working through being sick at work–was my body doing everything it could to get me to rest, to recover.
But I didn’t. I was desperately trying to carve out a career for myself without putting myself first. Because sometimes I couldn’t.
I kept pushing on, thinking I was “winning” over my depression, over my inability to be a smart, capable, independent adult who was stuck working retail and food service because I just wasn’t good, strong, or smart enough to hack it. And, later, an independent adult struggling in corporate fintech because I just wasn’t good, strong, or smart enough to hack it.
I did it all thinking that I was beating the inner voice that just wanted me to give up and be lazy.
Quitting isn’t failure.
It’s taken years of therapy for me to process those 10 years (especially the last four) and I still find myself frequently navigating through deep-rooted anxiety that flares up both expectedly and unexpectedly.
When I made the decision to end my sabbatical and accept a position with a start-up, I was excited and terrified. Every mistake, every misunderstanding, every misstep was a path to losing my job. It took over a year for me to finally feel safe. Then the pandemic set in and it was like starting all over again.
When I left that role and moved to another organization, I thought that this was it, this was the freshest of fresh starts with added perks: working with former coworkers I enjoyed, joining an established organization, a fully remote workplace, a strong focus on mental wellbeing at work, creative and engaged leaders.
But my imposter syndrome and anxiety continued to conspire and flare up. And while it wasn’t as loud as before, the same triggers still triggered, because this time it was like having the dungeon map pre-equipped and my brain was super-imposing anxiety-driven pattern recognition over each interaction, each work project, each Teams message.
I’m still at this organization, nearly two years later. Looking back at the day I quit my fintech job is something I now think of as one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself. I hit a reset button, I gave myself permission to let go and figure things out without having to juggle 60+ hours of work alongside my basic needs. And as much as I’ve had to actively work on navigating my imposter syndrome, I’ve also celebrated myself for quitting a bad environment so that I could find one that aligned with my values. It wasn’t failure. It was progress.
Normalizing the sabbatical.
Today, I’m 37 and (mostly) well-rested, hydrated, and confident in myself. I can recognize my anxiety’s behavioral patterns and I have a strong support network who, from the beginning, helped me forge my path ahead, even when I felt like I was stuck in the densest of forests.
I’ve since encouraged–and watched–friends and colleagues take sabbaticals of their own. Watching them take control of their peace and wellbeing way before total burnout is gratifying–it feels like a privilege to use my experience to help others avoid it.
But there’s definitely a deep mark in the timeline, dividing a “before” and “after” about sabbaticals and resume gaps being broadly accepted (and, sometimes, encouraged) as the pandemic flipped job market upside down and more people began loudly advocating for better work cultures and mental health resources.
I was lucky enough to have a partner, friends, mentors, some family, and a future employer who saw the value of and encouraged that opportunity for me; most of the stigma I was anxious about was a self-told story.
Not everyone has the means to take a sabbatical–I barely did. But these breaks don’t have to be as snap of a decision as mine was. As I watch flexibility and extended time away from work normalize across our society, I hope more employers and more people will recognize the value of taking an extended leave–a fully disconnected break–to help people recharge and reconnect with themselves, and to get ahead of (or stamp out) their own burnout.
My advice:
Work with a financial planner
Make a plan for a resume gap (or, if you can, work with your employer to take extended leave of absence)
Embrace a resume gap and own your need to rest by putting that time on your resume
Normalize rest. Normalize resume gaps. Normalize taking sabbaticals to experience the things you want to experience before retirement.
Want to learn more about how we managed the financial and mental wellbeing aspects of a sabbatical? Let’s chat.