Mini-Retirement [Series 1]: Taking The First Leap On Sabbatical

Publish date: Tue, 12 Mar 2019, 09:43 AM

I took a deep breath, straightened my chest, walked up to my boss and asked if he could spare me a few minutes.

"I promise it won't take long" I said to him as he nodded agreeing to my request.

We couldn't find an empty meeting rooms as we walked past a few of them and finally we had to settle down at one open empty area.

We sat down and braced ourselves for the discussion.

I started off by thanking him for giving me the opportunity to work in a company as one of the best bank in the world.

However, I felt a disconnect from working at the role I am currently in, perhaps due to the nature of the tasks and hence I would like to take a break and explore other opportunities outside.

I didn't elaborate to him what these other opportunities outside meant because I didn't see the need to explain the details, though in my mind I had some ideas that I am in the midst of exploring (I am not ready to reveal right now but hopefully in due time).

My boss tried to talk me out of it but my decision was already made.

He accepted my resignation.

Since I have no jobs waiting for me (since my intention is to explore something outside the corporate work), we agreed that I would only leave after my replacement is onboard and after I hand over my task to the new person.

That would roughly be over the next 2 to 3 months.

I have no issues with that.

If you have read my recent prelude series of articles written in the past few weeks, you would have probably guessed that I am up to something.

I've made several important decisions in my life but this probably ranks as one of the top few important up there.

Scary, bold but a necessary one at this point of my life, in my opinion.

Yes, I'm officially taking a sabbatical from my work, with an indefinite timeline to return to corporate work.

After working for 11 years straight in the corporate world of this rat race cycle, I decided that there needs to be a path out of this eight hour day (minimally), five days a week work cycle.

I had experienced first-hand myself and seen some of my co-workers working in these soul-draining corporations until their 60's and 70's because they trusted the system we were all taught to believe in.

At the end of their lives, what they get is a sequence accumulation of their unhappy experiences, lesser lifestyle choices, more debts and binges of complaints about how their lives are wasted.

Knowing that, I wanted to at least give myself a chance to explore alternative options.

Even if it turns out to be a "failure" at the end, I have at least tried and given it a shot in my life.

This is the whole intention I had since this blog was started a decade ago - to be accountable for our own actions through the articles we write and I had to account to myself (and readers) for having skin in the game.

The reasons why I am titling this as 'Mini-Retirement" instead of "Retirement" are two folds.

First, this is not a traditional retirement that many people think I will be shaking leg, couch-surfing or binge Netflix watching all day long. I am expecting to do a lot of work all many fronts - from exploring personal commitment to work to family to health to self-improvement.

These are free roaming opportunities period I have given myself a chance to explore things I've been wanting to accomplish but never had the chances to do in the past.

I am prioritizing things based on the scale of what I think as important so if I think exercise is something I've been lacking the time to do in the past, I wanted to use this opportunity to devote more time to it now. The same goes for my own self-improvement (for instance public speaking and communication skills, etc).

Second, I am not naïve enough to think this might work out.

I am giving myself a 6 months grace period until the end of the year to see how things progress from here. If it doesn't work out as well as we expect or if there's a sudden plunge in our financial conditions (though highly unlikely because we've done the sums!), then the decision would most likely be for me to return back to the corporate work.

The key here is having that availability of options at the end of the day to choose to return should there be a need to, though I can understand it might be difficult to re-enter the same workforce at the same level and pay.

So that's the latest updates I have for now.

I know it may sound a bit sudden, but this is a decision me and my wife have discussed and agreed and this is something we have been pondering for quite a while now.

At some point we just have to give it a go.

P.S: I'd be creating an exclusive page-tab on this "Mini-Retirement" articles with links here so it's easier to navigate the articles in chronological order.

In the next few series, I would be sharing about how my families/friends/readers react to this news, how we would be funding our expenses day to day, how we intend to grow our portfolio in the next few months, the progress of my work in this "free-roaming" period, our travel explorations outside our comfort zones and many more to come.

I'm excited to explore where this tunnel would leads us to.

Thanks for reading.

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