Re-add sabbatical post

src/blog/sabbatical.md

@@ -0,0 +1,309 @@
+---
+layout: base.njk
+title: "Why I'm taking a sabbatical"
+---
+
+# {{ title }}
+
+I'm struggling to publish this post because there's a high risk
+I come off as a privileged asshole (here I am voluntarily leaving a
+cushy job when there are so many people who can't find any work that
+treats them with basic respect or covers their cost of living).
+I'm ultimately going through with it because quite a few people have told me
+that they are considering doing something similar. I figure it will be helpful
+to share my situation, thoughts, and experiences to help others
+decide by way of comparison whether or not a sabbatical is right for them.
+
+If you're also doing or have done a sabbatical and want to swap notes or if
+this post helps you make a decision one way or another please
+[contact me](/contact)!
+
+## Motivations
+
+<blockquote>
+  <p>
+    What do I know, what do I know?<br>
+    Wilder than the place we live in<br>
+    I'll take you there, I'll take you there<br>
+    I don't mind some slight disorder<br>
+    Pull up the roots, pull up the roots<br>
+  </p>
+  <p>
+    <a href="https://youtu.be/tQS6XfuH2wE">Pull Up The Roots</a> by Talking Heads
+  </p>
+</blockquote>
+
+I've been thinking about doing a sabbatical for a few years now.
+Here are the circumstances that finally led me to go for it.
+
+### Kids
+
+The biggest factor was kids. I plan to start having kids in the
+next 5 years at most. If that happens I will have much more need for
+steady income, benefits, etc. If I'm ever going to take a sabbatical
+it feels like now or never. In other words, from here on out it will
+probably keep getting harder and harder to take a sabbatical.
+
+<h3 id="tradeoffs">Time, energy, money: pick 2</h3>
+
+I read somewhere that you can summarize the challenges
+of each phase of life in terms of a tradeoff between
+money, energy, and time. Young people generally have energy and time
+but no money. Middle-aged people: money and energy but no time.
+Old people: money and time but no energy. Whether or not
+this is an accurate description of each phase of life isn't
+really important. The key exercise for me was to
+think about my life in terms of a tradeoff
+between these 3 resources.
+
+Let's start with money. Part of me worries that I
+am financially screwing myself over by interrupting my
+career (more on that later), but the fact is that I currently
+have enough money to live off savings for 3 years at minimum,
+maybe 10 years at maximum.
+
+Next, energy. Although I still have 
+have lots of energy, it's nothing compared to the energy
+I had as a teenager. In other words
+I recognize that it could become a depleted commodity
+within 10 or 20 years and I should make the most of it
+while I still have it.
+
+That leaves us with time. Time
+was by far my scarcest commodity leading up to the sabbatical.
+Like many people, I wanted to believe that I could do
+a full-time job while also pursuing personal interests.
+After 3 or 4 years of that belief, I finally
+faced the reality that it's very challenging to
+do a full-time job, create personal projects, continue my education,
+maintain relationships, keep up my health, do household chores,
+and so on, all at the same time.
+Considering that the full-time job took up most of my time,
+the solution for creating more time was simple: ditch the job.
+However, I'll also mention here that time management is not
+one of my strengths. I complete tasks slowly and I frequently
+take breaks between tasks and I get distracted easily.
+
+I think of my sabbatical as a conscious decision to draw
+down my money reserves in order to replenish my time reserves
+and to make the most of my finite energy reserves (or maybe
+even replenish them by having more time to
+focus on nutrition, exercise, etc.).
+
+### Money does not equal wealth
+
+<blockquote>
+  <p>
+    Sergeant O'Leary is walkin' the beat<br>
+    At night he becomes a bartender<br>
+    He works at Mister Cacciatore's down<br>
+    On Sullivan Street<br>
+    Across from the medical center<br>
+    He's tradin' in his Chevy for a Cadillac<br>
+    You oughta know by now<br>
+    And if he can't drive<br>
+    With a broken back<br>
+    At least he can polish the fenders<br>
+  </p>
+  <p>
+    <a href="https://youtu.be/cJtL8vWNZ4o">Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)</a> by Billy Joel
+  </p>
+</blockquote>
+
+Another big factor for me is the idea that money
+does not equal wealth. Money is closely related to wealth, for sure,
+but it is not the same thing as wealth. I think of wealth
+as anything that increases my ability to survive or thrive in life.
+Examples:
+
+* Knowing first aid increases my chances of
+  survival in case of emergency. Having a million in the bank
+  won't mean shit if I'm on a nature hike 10 miles from
+  civilization and I just cut my leg badly and don't know how
+  to create a tourniquet.
+* Meditation increases my ability to handle pain (in all its forms)
+  and enjoy life. If I've got 10 million
+  in the bank but I explode in anger when someone cuts me off on the freeway
+  ("anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die") I'm not
+  wealthy in my book.
+
+Money is often a very useful tool for acquiring wealth
+but it is not itself wealth. The most common trap of course
+(as hinted at in that Billy Joel song) is using up all your time
+and energy to acquire money without ever converting that money
+into wealth. I'm at a point in my life
+where it seems most worthwhile to focus on converting some
+of my money into wealth.
+
+Another money-related motivator is that I'm probably too focused on
+money generally. This sabbatical is a bit of a psychological
+rebellion against focusing on money as the
+[be-all end-all](https://writingexplained.org/idiom-dictionary/end-all-be-all)
+purpose of my life.
+
+### Identity
+
+This sabbatical is also somewhat of an exercise in voluntarily
+giving up my identity in order to free up my psyche to focus
+on other aspects of life that are probably important for overall
+well-being which I'm currently neglecting.
+Now that I don't have the fancy career, who am I? 
+
+### Business & engineering experience
+
+I have a couple of modest business ideas that I plan on pursuing
+during my sabbatical.
+I don't think they'll make me a millionaire, but they do have
+the possibility to create a satisfying little income stream
+on the side. Even if they don't, I wager that the overall
+business and engineering experience I get from building them
+will make me a better technical writer (if I continue that career)
+or open up new career paths.
+
+### Supportive friends & family
+
+My partner, Gabi, was incredibly supportive of my sabbatical fantasy.
+All of the ideas that you see in this post,
+I bounced off her first. She understands all of the risks and costs 
+of this path for us and still encouraged me to go for it. It's kind of trite,
+but I genuinely see now that having or not having a supportive
+partner can be the deciding factor in any big decision like this.
+
+My family was frequently in disbelief about how well Google compensated
+and treated me, so I wasn't expecting them to be as supportive of
+my decision to leave my cushy job. But once I went through with it
+I was pleasantly surprised at how much they respected and supported my decision.
+
+## Fears
+
+<blockquote>
+  <p>
+    If I could travel through time I think I<br>
+    Would tell myself from the past<br>
+    You'll be fine<br>
+  </p>
+  <p>
+    <a href="https://youtu.be/ODQLN3ghuj4">Only If</a> by Steve Lacy
+  </p>
+</blockquote>
+
+As mentioned before it took me a few years to finally build up
+the courage to actually follow through with the sabbatical idea.
+Here are the things that prevented me from doing it sooner.
+
+### Money
+
+Money is the biggest concern for me. As mentioned before,
+I am consciously drawing down my money reserves in order to
+replenish my time reserves and focus my energy reserves.
+But just because I'm doing it consciously doesn't mean
+it's easy for me. Here are a few loosely related ideas
+around my money fears.
+
+* It will be tough to watch my net worth decline month after month,
+  after watching it grow pretty much every month over the last 5 years.
+  I honestly don't know whether my psyche will be able to handle that.
+* Due to compound interest, choosing to draw down my net worth $50K (for example)
+  as a 32 year old versus continuing to grow it could have a very large effect
+  on my net worth when I'm 65.
+* An implicit bet behind my sabbatical is that Google or another quality
+  company will hire me again. If that turns out to be
+  incorrect, then my decision to take a sabbatical will have majorly
+  damaged my long-term earnings potential. For the record, I was promoted
+  to Staff Technical Writer (L6) right before I left Google (i.e. I was
+  promoted in May 2021 and I left in June 2021) and I have 9 years of experience.
+* I also think that the writing is on the wall that Big Tech will
+  eventually get regulated in the next 5 or 10 years, which probably
+  means less overall profitability, which therefore means less
+  compensation for rank-and-file employees like myself,
+  which by extension implies lower salaries across the software
+  industry at large (since Big Tech essentially sets the upper
+  bounds of the market rates for rank-and-file salaries). In other words,
+  part of me thinks that there is a finite window of opportunity (5-10 years)
+  for earning a high salary in a rank-and-file software job.
+* Assuming that I do get a new job with decent compensation again, I won't
+  be back at my previous earning power for a while. For example,
+  stock grants are a big part of the rank-and-file compensation at Google.
+  But those only kick in after a year. So even if I got a comparable job after
+  the sabbatical (June 2022), my earnings probably won't recover to my pre-sabbatical
+  level (June 2021) until I'm 1 year into the new job (June 2023).
+* Someone close to me lost their job recently.
+  I'm no longer in a great position to support them financially.
+* Shortly after resigning, I had a pang of regret about leaving Google.
+  Why didn't I keep the job, put hard limits on my time and energy,
+  and work towards other goals, like buying a home?
+* Health insurance. It's a mess in the United States, and I was
+  worried that I would have to pay [out the wazoo][wazoo] just to get
+  barebones coverage.
+
+<aside>
+  (Aside) As luck would have it, global healthcare plans seem reasonably
+  priced. My partner and I got covered under Aetna's MHP Exclusive
+  plan (their most comprehensive package) for under $300 a month total
+  (not $300 per person). We opted for the highest deductible option
+  as a bet that we won't need to use the service and because we have the
+  savings to cover those deductibles if needed. The catch however is
+  that you can only spend up to 6 months in the US.
+  This is fine for me because I'm spending most of my sabbatical
+  outside of the US.
+</aside>
+
+[wazoo]: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/out-up-the-wazoo
+
+### Career
+
+As mentioned in the last section, my sabbatical is an implicit
+bet that I can put a year-long gap into my career with no major
+harm, and that I will be able to easily find a job in a
+year. If those assumptions are incorrect, future me might
+not be too happy with present me's decisions!
+
+### Lazyness
+
+I have high hopes for all of my sabbatical plans,
+but I also know that I struggle with lazyness.
+If I don't end up doing much of anything during the
+sabbatical, I may feel that it was a mistake to leave
+my job, because the job forced me to stay productive
+generally throughout life. As they say,
+"If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it."
+
+## Plans
+
+I don't have a single big project in mind for my sabbatical.
+I have lots of small projects lined up, and I plan on
+focusing on one each week. Some will take longer than
+a week to finish. I like this approach because it balances
+the need to devote time to focus on a single project with
+my enjoyment of variety. The risk
+of course is that I start a bunch of different projects and
+don't finish any of them. I also have some goals that are essentially
+habits that I want to build, such as calling family every
+week, meditating every day, etc.
+
+Although I don't have a single project, I do have a single overarching theme, however:
+[joie de vivre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joie_de_vivre).
+Everything that I do, even the mundane stuff (especially the mundane stuff),
+I'm going to focus on enjoying it fully.
+How you do anything is how you do everything, as the Buddhists say.
+I have come to believe that the person who can enjoy whatever
+they're doing and make that joy contagious will actually
+end up accomplishing the most. Yet even if I don't accomplish anything,
+I'll still be joyful, so what would it matter anyways?
+
+At the end of the day, when I think about having a year 
+to do whatever the hell I want, I'm full of excitement
+for the possibilities and I don't regret it yet.
+
+<blockquote>
+  <p>
+    The less we say about it, the better<br>
+    Make it up as we go along<br>
+    Feet on the ground<br>
+    Head in the sky<br>
+    It's OK I know nothing's wrong, nothing<br>
+  </p>
+  <p>
+    <a href="https://youtu.be/fsccjsW8bSY">This Must Be The Place</a> by Talking Heads
+  </p>
+</blockquote>

src/index.md

@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@ technical writer.
 * [Proper Full Moon songs](/blog/moon/)
 * [You (maybe?) have thousands of ancestors from the 1600s](/blog/ancestors/)
 * [Vim cheatsheet](/blog/vim/)
+* [Why I'm taking a sabbatical](/blog/sabbatical/)
 
 ## Favorites