Most people imagine a sabbatical starts at the airport.
Mine started after I came back from Ecuador.
I expected to feel refreshed—like most people usually do after traveling. Instead, I felt something heavier. I would get home, lie in bed, and feel deeply depressed in a way that didn’t pass after a few days. It wasn’t normal sadness. It was the kind where I stopped eating properly, stayed in bed, and wondered if the trip had even happened. I would check my phone just to confirm the photos were real.
At first, I dismissed it as post-travel blues. But it kept happening. Every trip ended the same way.
Then something shifted.
I realized I wasn’t just “sad after traveling.” I was returning to a life that didn’t feel like mine anymore.
Around the same time, I noticed something else. I was cleaning up my social media and saw people who had traveled more than I had. Not wealthy people. Just people living lives that included movement, exploration, change. I had more financial stability than some of them, but less lived experience. I could count my countries on one hand. That gap didn’t feel like coincidence anymore.
That was the first real break in the pattern.
At that point, I was still working full-time as an RN. On paper, it was a stable job that many people would consider ideal. Remote work. Reliable income. Security.
But internally, I was burned out in a way that had been accumulating for 14 years. I was exhausted physically, mentally, and emotionally. I was spending money on takeout and small comforts just to get through the week. I had been in the same profession for over a decade, and it felt less like a career and more like something I had been locked into.
That’s when the idea of a sabbatical stopped being abstract.
The main reason I wanted one was simple: freedom. Or at least a temporary version of it. A way to see what life looks like outside of the structure I had been living in for years.
The moment it moved from idea to plan was not dramatic. It wasn’t a resignation letter or a single turning point. It was smaller than that. It was accumulating frustration, and then “friendly reminders” from work that made it harder to ignore how tightly my time was controlled. It was having to negotiate when I take my time off, always at the mercy of the corporate machine.
When my request for a PTO– submitted 3 months in advance– was denied despite following institutional policies, I snapped.
I’m done asking for permission to live, to be sick. To be human.
From there, the preparation began.
I researched. I read tons of articles and blogs, watched YouTube videos, and joined online forums. I spoke to a therapist to make sure I wasn’t just clinically depressed and crazy. I took verified and studied Values Assessment tests to prove that this is truly what I want and not just a stress response.
On paper, it should have been simple: save money, sell things, pick a destination, book a place to stay.
In reality, it looks like this:
- coordinating with an immigration lawyer for a professional visa
- gathering documents through legal channels in my home country
- slowly purging possessions I no longer use
- liquidating assets to fund the transition
- taking extra shifts to build more runway
- teaching online and trying to turn it into a sustainable income stream
- building curriculum and digital workbooks while working full-time
The most time-consuming part is the teaching and curriculum work. It requires switching between two modes of thinking—nursing and language teaching—and managing both at a high level. But surprisingly, that part is not what drains me most.
The heaviest part is the legal work.
The documents, the immigration coordination, the deadlines, the payments, the uncertainty of whether everything will be accepted. That is the “final boss” layer. It determines whether the entire plan is real or not.
Trust me, I’ve been through this part before. As someone from the Global South, I do not have the privilege of the right accent, the right skin tone, and the right social safety nets that the loudest voices on the internet have. So I am very familiar with and experienced in visa applications and bureaucratic red tape.
And most of that is invisible.
People don’t see the legal coordination, the paperwork, or the slow dismantling of a life built around stability. They don’t see the balancing act between working full-time, building a second income stream, and trying to prepare for departure at the same time.
What they see is the idea of a sabbatical. A privilege. A break. A flight.
But what it actually looks like—at least for me—is something closer to infrastructure building while still living inside the system you are trying to leave.
Before I started this, I thought preparation would mostly be about saving money and getting rid of things.
It turns out it is more about managing systems:
emails, lawyers, bank transfers, timelines, and spending money just to unlock other parts of the process. Even leaving is expensive in ways I didn’t expect.
The biggest constraint right now is not just money or time.
It is the fact that I want teaching to become my full-time work, but it is not strong enough yet to replace my current job. So I am building one system while still dependent on another.
Right now, the most accurate way to describe my state is simple: exhausted, scared, lonely.
What feels most stuck is the exhaustion. Not physical exhaustion alone, but the mental load of constantly calculating trade-offs—sleep, shifts, students, deadlines, and whether any decision will affect the fragile balance I’m trying to maintain.
Most people think a sabbatical is an extended vacation. Something you pause your life for and then return from unchanged.
That is not what this is.
For me, this is not a pause. It is a transition.
A bridge between one version of life and another. Maybe I cross it once and keep moving forward. Maybe I cross it back temporarily to rebuild resources before crossing again somewhere else.
But either way, it is not a return to the same place.
This series is about that process—the reality of trying to build freedom while still inside the life you are trying to leave.
Not the romantic version. The operational one.
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