Monday calls… Sabbatical draws to a close

This feels like it may have been the world’s longest Sabbatical.

But.  I’m glad to say…  My career break has now drawn to a close.

Yes, it is the end of a Sabbatical.  Yet as one adventure finishes, a whole new adventure dawns.

And isn’t that really how life should be?

I’m getting ahead of myself.  My diary has gone dark for a full six months now, and I should explain.

I’ve been in array of discussions on potential next chapters, and those might have been compromised by making a private diary public.  But I’ve been (lovingly) nagged by multiple people about where the narrative has gone, so as promised (and even just for my own purposes), here I am to fill in the metaphorical ellipses left in the middle of 2023.

I came back from my road trip last May with a very full set of rich life experiences, with an empty wallet, with a very badly busted shoulder, with a felt need for an income (being broke will do that), and with a yearning for a home of my own and a bit of “normal” life rhythm and community.

Processing all of that needs a particular sequence, as most of us (including me) need an income to have a home, and a home to build a rhythm and community.  So in the meantime I’ve been bouncing around between friends and family across three different Eastern Sea Board states – a week here, a few days there and just once a month the other place.

It has been an incredibly sobering and earthy experience.  I wouldn’t have said that my identity was rooted in either my job or my home.  But take both of those away, for an extended period, against will and preference, and that’s a real test of where our identity actually lies!  In reality, this isn’t the first time and doubtless won’t be the last time that identity question has been probed for me.  An uncomfortable process, but probably a worthwhile one to be subjected to every now and then.  I’ve kept my head up and mostly kept a smile on my dial, but it has not been easy.

Before I’d really had time to reorient after the road trip and to start a job search, I fielded a request to explore purchasing a business (on money borrowed from the vendor).  Before that conversation finished a second group approached me.  After a decade building two businesses of my own, it felt natural to grow another business, so easy to lean into these conversations.  I ended up declining the first, but then a third and fourth followed the first two – all initiated by others.  I eventually declined each of those, not having found common ground on commercial terms and other matters of conscience.

It might have made sense to “hedge my bets” and apply for employment positions in parallel to all of that.  I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.  I’d have to explain to an employer that their offer was my Plan B, and that I’d drop the employment in a heartbeat if I could consummate a business purchase.  That didn’t feel like a great interview tactic!  In fact it would have been quite disrespectful, and only slightly better than withholding that very material information from an employment discussion.  So – wisely or otherwise – I put employment search on hold while first driving to ground those purchase discussions.

In the end it was two weeks before last Christmas that I finally put to bed the last of the purchase discussions, and committed to myself I wouldn’t (couldn’t) entertain another.  Nearing Christmas is, of course, the worst time of the year to go job hunting.  But nonetheless I applied for two positions, both of which ended up in an interview… three months later.

Meantime I was approached to run a tech startup business, and so ended up in three concurrent conversations.  I actually prayed for precisely two of the three employers (no… definitely not all three!) to say “no thanks”… as I couldn’t find a rubric to choose between such distinctly-different opportunities.  True to that prayer, I was offered the tech startup role and rejected for the other two. I’m now very glad I wasn’t able to make a poor choice and accept one of the other two.

Having now just begun my first work in two years, it isn’t “just any job”.  I now see that it fits better than almost any other conversation I’ve had over the last 9 months; both because of who I am and as a match with CV and experience.  And it’s a great team I’m working with, which is an extraordinary blessing given the pressure I felt to “accept just about any job” that might pay, having been so very long between gigs.

In fact it is now 2 years and 2 months since I was last properly employed.  That’s kind of “long term unemployed”.  Technically.  But probably “not really”, as the Sabbatical etc took me off the job-search market for some of that time.  The “meaningful” statistic is probably the 9 months of searching for income since I returned from the road trip.  But still.  That’s long enough to have a baby!  I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams it would take that long to find work.

Discombobulated.

It’s a great word.  It’s an awful feeling.  (If you’re not already familiar, it’s worth investing a moment in getting so.) “Discombobulated” best describes the sense of such a long time of feeling between worlds, of being homeless, jobless, directionless.

After securing a role, the next interesting conundrum was to find a home.  It’s all well and good to have a job, but it would be difficult to hold that down when living on a park bench (usually no laptop chargers!) or when floating around other people’s spare rooms.  While it is impossible to get a home without an income, it is conversely really difficult to keep an income without a home.  Check mate.

And that puzzle is only further complicated by a currently-difficult general rental market.  That’s then on steroids when accounting for the standard leasing requirements to prove employment probation has passed, and to provide pay slips.  I can do neither having only just started work.  Hmmm!

At this point I can but be amazed and thankful for the provision at just the right moment of a home that became available within my personal circle of friends.  I am grateful that owners of a new home were willing to take me on as a rental tenant purely on trust, and without any of the normal due diligence or vetting process for potential tenants.

That’s all very cool.  But there was still a wrinkle in the plan.  There’s (sadly) only one of me, which would just maybe (!) under-utilise this brand new 5-bedroom mansion with weekly rental rates correspondingly out of kilter for one single bloke.  How to iron out that wrinkle?  Well.  Not only was the owner willing to take me on trust without vetting, but also they have generously given permission for me to sub-let the additional rooms through Airbnb.  There’s an amazing little anecdote (just for private retelling) about how the rental agent went from saying to the owner “no don’t EVER let a tenant do that” to “oh of course that’d be alright in this case”.

But the net of all of this is that I now have a job (yay!) a home (yay!), the potential to rebuild community and rhythm (double yay!), and also a side-gig as an Airbnb host (can’t quite bring myself to say that cleaning that many toilets amounts to a final “yay!”).  In fact, if you are (or know anyone who is) looking for quiet, gorgeous luxury accomodation 5 minute’s drive from Australia’s Fashion Capital, please do book in and come and stay!  It is apparently the best Airbnb my most recent guest has ever stayed in.

 

That is then a very fast fly-over of the 9 months since my last diary update.

 

I’ve had a couple of people ask me what I’ve learned or how I’ve changed through all of this.  I will need to let the dust settle a little more to really see that clearly, and perhaps it will be for others to say if/how I’ve changed from the Sabbatical and from these challenges.  That said:

  • I’m struck by how much stuff – literally and metaphorically – I crowded into my life, but how little I actually need.  May I keep a simpler approach the rest of my days.
  • I am perhaps less driven than I was.  That may be partly because I don’t have others relying on me to the same extent I once did (and wish I still did); but also because I’ve been able to exhale some of a life’s accumulated strains over both the 6 months on the road and following 9 months of waiting.  May I continue to take time being present rather than only constantly and relentlessly pursue the next goal.
  • Life is seldom as bad as my worst fears, and rarely as Hollywood-glittering as my most excited expectations.  Either way, “the sun will come out tomorrow”.  (Thanks, Annie!)
  • There is much less distance than most of us care to admit between “normal” life and a desolate life.  I spend a little longer wondering about the stories of those I meet that are down and out, and offer a little less judgement on how each such story unfolded.
  • I have so much for which to be thankful.  Just a couple of highlights from the last 12 months:
    • I’ve had an amazing road trip and incredible life experience.
    • I genuinely should have died in my crash last May, but didn’t.
    • Given that I’m alive, I should at least have lost my left arm in that smash, but didn’t.
    • Given limbs all present and accounted for, I should at least have permanently reduced function in my left arm, but it works almost perfectly.
    • I now have a great job and income, and a lovely home.
    • I have the love and care of my family of origin and of so many friends.  Without you, I would have been living under a bridge or on a park bench a full 6 months ago.  (Marriage breakdown is so destructive.)  And without your love and care this incredibly painful and difficult last 5 years would have hurt more than I would have had strength for.  I owe you such a debt of gratitude.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.

What is the sum of all of this?

I wonder if it accumulates towards just a little more peace in my head and in my heart.

That’s probably not a bad outcome from a transitional Sabbatical, and not an awful foundation for a new chapter, a new start, a new adventure.

 

Oh, and one last post-script: For the first two+ months after last May’s smash, I was convinced I would never touch another motorbike again – ever.  Then my motorbike got home to Melbourne from the Laos crash site, and it turned out that she and I still had chemistry.  So I took her for a ride and, well, I got over my “never touch” nonsense within just a few minutes.  Now… I know that I have to finish what I started.  The only two questions are 1. When?  and 2. Do I restart, or pick up from where I stacked?

Watch this space…

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