Have you heard of the term mini-retirement? I believe it was coined by Tim Ferriss, or at least become popular after he published his book 4 Hour Work Week. The idea is that one should not wait to travel or do stuff you love when you are old and retired, but instead do several mini-retirements of 1 to 6 months throughout your life. The concept is quite similar to a sabbatical.
This is exactly what I’m planning to do.
In June it will have been 3 years since I graduated from college and started working. Seems my life has been going in multiples of three (3 years in middle school, high school, college each), so this seems a good time to change things up. Also my project at work has a natural finish line. So it seems that starting mid July it would be a good time to take time off for 3 months.
A lot of people probably will want to know how I am doing (I know my parents definitely will), so looks like writing something up and posting pictures regularly will be inevitable. So I thought I might as well start now and share thoughts of preparing for the trip.
Why am I doing this trip? As far as I remember myself I have been fascinated by travel and always have valued freedom and flexibility. So probably to anyone who knows me it is not a big surprise that I’m embarking on something like this.
At first I thought that I will hear a lot of resistance and people will tell me that it is a dumb idea to pause my job and travel for 3 months. So I asked tons of people for opinions. Somebody at Google said that nobody will notice if I leave for 3 months. He was right. I have a friend at Google who took 3 months off and I didn’t even notice. Once I started looking for people who have done it before, it turns out there is a bunch and it is not that crazy idea after all. Another person at Google said his only regret about taking 3 months off was that he didn’t do it sooner in his career.
I talked with my manager, he was supportive of the idea. In fact, he had done a similar thing, he took 2 months off in his career. Also there is no issue with H1B visa renewal, HR is fine with it, and not a single person has told me it is a dumb idea. So now in fact, I don’t have any excuses left and now I have no choice but to do it. That’s a bit scary!
Where am I going to go? There are so many places I want to visit and spend considerable time there, but for starters: Latvia, France (for west coast swing dance camp), Georgia to visit Shorena and Japan.
There are things I want to do: learn/review foreign languages, dance, visit friends, read books, perhaps take an online course and become more comfortable with writing.
I’m sure this trip is not going to be just about seeing places but also about seeing friends, getting out of my comfort zone and growing in various ways.
Next up:
– Figuring out the dance events I would like to attend.
– Figuring out who I definitely want to visit.
– Pros/cons about buying airline tickets with cash vs airline miles/points.
– Use this as an excuse to declutter my room/closet so that I can sublet it while I’m away.
– Decide should I travel with suitcase (my awesome zuca bag) vs a backpack and its size.
March 13, 2013 @ home in San Francisco