Learning to live slowly

If you asked me at the start of my career break what would make my time off successful, I would have an easy answer. I wanted to take time to travel with family, see far away friends, learn some new skills, practice old hobbies. Basically, do the things I never had time to do. Sounds good, right?

I did almost none of those things, and it was perfect.

Instead, I spent my summer hanging out with my kids, reading books that long lingered on the shelf, and watching movies with my wife. We went to the community pool. A lot. I worked with a nutritionist to dial in my diet, kept up training at the gym, and went on regular walks outside. I built things with my son and drew pictures with my daughter. I slept in.

There were glimpses of what I’d envisioned, of course. We vacationed at the beach, I hosted friends visiting from London, and I cooked a lot. I even tried mountain biking for the first time since I was a kid. (It is so much harder than I remember.) I joined a makerspace and learned 3D printing. However, those moments were infrequent. They were not the highlights I thought they would be.

While I didn’t accomplish what I imagined, I did what I actually required: I rested. Good rest, meaningful rest.

Making a hard reset

In hindsight, it’s obvious that what I truly needed was a hard reset. I’ve been working in one way or another since I was 15 and those decades of accommodating others’ priorities caught up with me. My break gave me the opportunity to get to know myself again, to find and understand my own needs first. It let me take a breath and live slowly.

I’m a fairly introspective person, but my break offered a rare chance to fully reflect on my own story and values.

Taking extended time off is a huge privilege, one I didn’t want to waste. However, that mindset let to pressuring myself to get it right, to accomplish things, to be productive. For the first few months, my mind ran in circles, wanting to do big things but never finding the motivation to get started. Was I really going to spend this entire time and have nothing to show for it?

That’s when it hit me: I wasn’t taking a break. I was subconsciously trying to find another job. I’d fallen into the trap of making my work my identity, mistaking my accomplishments for a sense of purpose. My time off forced me to strip away my ego and see myself in full.

Discovering what matters most

I needed to stop framing a career break as success or failure and start thinking of it as time to just exist, to reconnect with myself.

With that clarity, it felt like my eyes opened for the first time in years. My senses tingled, and my priorities were finally in the right place:

• Take care of myself
• Nurture love with my wife, the foundation of our family
• Provide for and be present with my kids
• Everything else

I used this framework to begin unpacking past experiences. What conditions made me the happiest? What boundaries did I need? What was I truly confident in? What did leaning into confidence look like? What did it mean to be my best self?

Equally important was leaving things behind. I was still holding onto grievances, to the anger and frustration and self doubt sowed by toxic workplaces and missed opportunities. One day a friend asked me if I’d forgiven some of those past experiences, and that question rocked me. I had not, and I needed to. Forgiveness was hard, necessary work, but it wasn’t for them. It was for me.

Decoupling my work from my identity meant recognizing that professional missteps were not personal failures. I learned to see past situations for what they were, where the conditions were never right for me to succeed in the first place. Understanding this helped me see the fear and pressure others suffered too. An honest look at the past was the only way for me to grow and heal.

Getting back to work

Where does work sit now? When friends ask me, “What’s your dream job?” I tell them the truth, I don’t dream about labor. However, there is a certain fulfillment I get from doing meaningful work with great people. I missed that feeling. With my priorities realigned, I feel prepared to pursue it again while keeping work in the right perspective. I can put myself and family first and still enjoy a wonderful career. Doing so is what allows it to be wonderful, to fill a part of me without making it the whole.

Ultimately my approach now is to ensure I do work I care about with people I enjoy solving problems with. Equally important is to recognize that I refuse to trade career success for quality of life. My work should enable and empower my life, not the other way around.

I’m deeply grateful for having this period in my life.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading. I know this post is my own personal story, but hopefully some of it resonated with what you may be going through. If you have your own reflections and experiences, please reach out. I’d love to hear them.