Taking a Sabbatical

For the last 6 months, my husband and I have seriously been discussing taking a sabbatical. While most take a sabbatical from their careers, we want to take a sabbatical from New York City.


Why? Well, I've lived here nearly 8 long, grinding, years and the whole time it's been a bit of a struggle. Other times it's pure bliss. Most people I know who live here have an intense love hate relationship with New York, making most of us neurotic to say the least. Let me try to illustrate what I mean:

I love all the people, crowds, and energy here. But on any given day about 10% of the millions of people who live here, not to mention the millions that commute here, are having the worst day of their entire lives. They might be perfectly nice, respectable people on any other day. But today, they're pissed off, on a tirade, and pushing you out of their way and screaming. I'm sick of this.

There's tons of freelance work here. This is obviously a blessing, but it also means the competition is fierce. I'd really like to keep the freelance contacts I have and branch out into smaller markets. Big fish in the pond so to speak. As opposed to minnow in a sewer full of rats and mutated pigeons.

The subway takes you everywhere. It's a fantastic way to travel from point A to point B, especially if you want to enjoy some cocktails after work and don't have to worry about driving. But every day the express trains are running local, the local trains have switched lines and suddenly you're in the meat packing district instead of the West Village. You end up walking about 30 minutes out of your way to get anywhere. It also takes about an hour to go 10 miles. While it's certainly entertaining to have 'Ziggy' perform a Tracy Chapman number for you on the F train, you also get a lot of people who come on yelling "Right or wrong, we hustle hard!", kids doing back flips for money next to your head, girls pole dancing, and random fights. I've also seen a 2 minute magic show where a dude let a live dove fly around the car to an audience of trapped commuters, a guy sitting in a rocking chair (yes, on the train) and pull out 3 kittens from his coat, and people listening to their boom boxes at full blast. And as fun as watching humpback rats run around on the subway tracks is a total titillating blast, it gets kind of gross after awhile.

The city is constantly changing. This is a good thing since the city can be a sweltering hell hole in the summer with subway steam blasting up your skirt, and bitterly cold with polluted and rat infested snow in the winter. But someone is moving in and out of one of the apartments surrounding you just about every single day. Every time we go walking down Smith Street in Brooklyn, there's a new Brooklyn Industries or Flight 001 opening which simultaneously indicates a raise in your own rent since the 'hood is becoming even more gentrified. It's just hard to get a sense of community.

The city is incredibly safe. Since 9/11, New York has become the safest big city in the country. I have absolutely no fear walking down the street at 2am by myself or riding the subway in the middle of the night. That's all well and good when I just ate a midnight gyro and want to regret it all the way home on the train, but the city is also pushing out artists in droves. New York is quickly becoming known as a museum city that just houses art instead of producing it. Banking, finance, and retail are now the norm and urban wonders like CBGB's have been closed down and pushed out. Starbucks line the blocks and small businesses are closing up, only to be replaced by Citibanks, Chase Banks, Washington Mutual, Dunkin' Donuts, Crate and Barrel, and a slew of Jennifer Convertibles. Times Square is now a modified Disney World complete with tourists stopping traffic to pose in front of Bubba Gump Shrimp with The Naked Cowboy. I'd kill for a peepshow next to the gynormous Toys R' Rus with the hideous working Ferris wheel. Now the city council is talking about taking away our freaks in Coney Island and making it into another Times Square attraction. I shudder at the thought of losing The Freak Show Bar or Rudy's.

Everything you need is within a 2 block radius. It's pretty amazing to be able to get a sandwich, banana, snacks, beer, detergent, aspirin, lottery tickets, ice cream, toothpaste, rat traps, a cactus, firelight log, candles, vegetables, and an umbrella at any deli or bodega. But you're also at the mercy of bodega brands. Chicken flavored crackers, strange beer you've never heard of, dusty vegetables that may conceivably be left over from last season, and umbrellas that break the second you open them. But there's no available Wal-Marts around these parts to make a big haul. You end up dragging food home that you only sort of want and wonder what happened to the days when you could walk into a Kroger in your parents' suburbia and buy a month's worth of groceries, find a movie, pick up a coffee, sample some free cheese, stop by your bank, and half-furnish your house without ever leaving the Kroger Compound.

There's plenty of people to hang-out with. True, but it's also like having a part-time job to maintain any kind of social life or friendship. People regularly break up for having a 'long distance relationship" between Brooklyn and Queens. Others move in together after dating for 4 weeks to save on rent. Our population of friends is scattered between Williamsburg, Carroll Gardens, Washington Heights, and Queens and it takes months to schedule one evening together.

New York City is the land of apartments. This can work out to your advantage because you don't need a lot of 'stuff'. There's no room for it. You also have a landlord that, in theory, should take care of repairs, heat, and hot water. But as far as buying an apartment? Well, even if you can afford the mortgage, you're looking at an additional $600-$1500 in maintenance fees every month. We're just not sure we're willing to pay upwards of $3,200 to live in a small crap box at the very edge of Staten Island in Tottenville. Incidentally, it's also completely normal to follow "So what do you do?" with "What do you pay in rent?" exactly 5 minutes after you've met a complete stranger.

Everyone here is intensely ambitious. Fantastic, it's part of the reason I moved here and it's motivated me to work harder than ever. But that situation breeds an intense level of careerism. I wouldn't even call it classism, but careerism. When the inevitable "What do you do?" question comes up, you hear a lot of this: "I'm an administrative assistant." (long pause) "But what do you want to do?" God forbid anyone in this place be content with a decent salary and an office job. You have to want to be a singer, artist, filmmaker, writer, top tier real estate broker, Broadway actor, playwright, make-up artist to the stars, fashion designer, socialite, TV host, celebrity assistant, or 'It' boy or girl on Page 6. While it's true I am a writer and my husband is a graphic designer, we still get a lot of flack from careerists. "Oh, you're a travel writer? But not for Frommers? You haven't had your own travel guide published?" etc. This is really annoying.

"I'm so successful! Muhahaha!"

And so in light of these facts and that we've never felt quite 'settled' here, we decided to start making a list of why we're looking to leave the city:

• We've badly outgrown our apartment and are ready to buy real estate. Since we're not all that interested in cleaning out our savings to buy a crap box (see above) and living in an even smaller apartment than we are now, we'd like to city what's available in other parts of the country.
  

• We are absolutely done living below and above other people. Constant noise, music, fighting, and rude neighbors. Talking to them nicely does absolutely nothing but just acerbates the situation. They respond in kind by blasting TV's, stomping over us, and generally making our lives hell.
  

• While we have an abundant amount of work to choose from in the city, we're working all the time to sustain a decent standard of living. We'd like to slow down in life, have a cup of coffee once in awhile and drink it sitting down, and that can't happen if we're working to live all the time.

• We'd like to start a family soon. While plenty of parents happily raise kids in the city and can offer all the culture and urban perks available, I'd like a yard, a nursery bigger than a closet, and decent public schools that don't require intensive interviews for 4-year olds trying to break into the competitive world of pre-school.
  

• My husband is a graphic designer and would like a small letterpress. Even small ones take up room we don't have in the apartment. (For some reason our apartment came with a washing machine but not a dryer. And so currently we have to hang our washed clothes all over the kitchen and cook around them while they dry). Plus, letterpresses are generally very heavy and need to be kept in a garage or basement.

• We'd like to start side businesses including this whole idea of customized letterpress invitations and posters. I'd also like to start a commercial travel website to expand on my blog here and generate more sources of revenue. Right now I barely have time for a blog let alone all the ideas we have. If we lived somewhere cheaper, we could pursue other interests and ideas.

• Our sense of adventure tells us we want to try something different, have a fresh start, rename ourselves Trixie and Speed Racer and see other parts of the country for more than a 3-day weekend here and there.

• I pay out of pocket for my health insurance. I could technically receive benefits from my husband's work, but it would actually be more expensive than what I currently pay myself. This is just life in the 21st century. You have to go into near debt to have adequate health insurance and companies no longer offer it, or offer it at a costly premium, so they in turn can save money in their own nightmare of a faltering economy. My research shows that both of us could be on a health plan in another city for less than what I pay just for myself.

Scary insurance folder.

Although we're not aiming for all these things (ie: family, side businesses, etc) during our sabbatical, we know we need some much-needed perspective on where we want to go next in relation to what we want from life long term.

But how will we make it work? There's income, bills, sanity, and housing to consider. At first, it all seemed quite overwhelming, but then we realized it couldn't be as overwhelming as living in New York for nearly a decade, and slowly the answers came. We've been able to formulate a reasonable plan with plenty of room for error. What does that mean? Well, we've never taken a sabbatical before, nor do we know anyone who has that can give us some pointers. We want to make sure we've allowed ourselves room for mistake. We want to be able to recover if something we planned to do just doesn't pan out. This is what we've come up with:

• Our lease is up in September and since we don't want to find a new apartment to rent around here, we can put all our furniture in storage and rent a furnished sublet in another city via Craigslist or a corporate apartment set-up.
  

• We pay more in rent than just about anywhere else in the country. After extensive research in all cities we're interested in trying, we're confident we can find a sublet for less than what we're paying now. Not to mention we probably won't have to worry about bills for heat (it will be summer) and cable is usually included in sublets and corporate housing.
  

• My husband is interested in teaching adjunct or part-time at a university or art college. We've been researching and contacting schools in other cities we'd like to consider. While he currently has a staff job in New York, he wants to go freelance by August and blow this pop stand. He's already freelancing on the side for several steady clients and makes a substantial part-time income. All his clients have offered him more work when he finally kicks his staff job to the curb. Going full-time, he should be able to sustain a decent income without much difficulty. To top it all off, his current employers have already indicated they will keep him on as a contractor when he leaves the company.
  

• I recently secured a column at the publication I freelance for. It doesn't pay much, but it will keep my clips healthy, give me some leverage to find other work, and keep my foot in the door with them. In addition, they are launching 2 new websites that will need extensive editorial work. I already work from home for them most of the week and am confident I can freelance for them out of state at least 10 hours a week, though I think it would be more like 25 or 30. Additionally, the other clients I freelance for could care less where I live. Of the 4 or 5, I've only ever met one face to face. Why should they care if I'm emailing them from NY or the middle of nowhere?
  

• I type 90 wpm and have administrative experience. I've drudged up coffee with semi-stale milk for the best of them. And I have no problem temping if we need to make ends meet. I'm also an experienced video editor and have worked on at least 100 advertising campaigns. Despite the fact that I constantly write posts bitching and moaning about how much advertising sucks and how awesome it is to be done with that and a travel writer now, I'm happy to freelance in that industry again, temporarily, for "The Greater Good". (re: Shawn of the Dead).
  

• We've been saving our income like crazy and have enough for a significant down payment on a house. Part of our killer savings is because as a freelancer, I never know what my income will be. Some weeks it's quite sizable, others it's rather pathetic. It all balances out, but we save almost 75% of my income to ensure we have a nice nest egg to get us through when my pay is sluggish. We're also incorporated, which gives us breathing room with our taxes. If needed, we could use a small portion of it to make ends meet during our sabbatical.

• In addition to the sizable down payment we've saved, we're also saving a small amount every month in a savings account attached to our checking. This will allow us to easily move money over when we need it on our sabbatical. By the time we're ready to leave, we should have enough for approximately 6 weeks of full expenses from this account, if we continue to live the way we do now. However, since all the cities we're interested in visiting are significantly cheaper than New York, we should have enough for 8-10 weeks. Our idea is we'll have this spare cash as an everyday emergency fund and not have to dip into our true savings. Plus if all our plans fall through, we'd have about 10 weeks to figure something else out before needing to dip into our other savings.
  

• My blog is continuing to make money. Nothing to live off of, but within the next 6 months, all signs of how it's growing indicate that it will become a nice contribution to our sabbatical. I'm also planning to launch a new website between now and August 15th, the date we're planning to leave.

• If everything goes right to hell in a hand basket, we have plenty of connections in New York and could move back, stay in a friend's spare bedroom or sublet via Craigslist and start looking for that home to buy.

"I'm a power seller! Can I show you something in a Colonial or Cape Cod?"

So now that we have an idea of how this so-called sabbatical will work, we had to figure out where we want to go. Portland, Oregon was on the list, but I already lived there for a summer in my early 20's when I was studying video editing. We'd also like to be on the same general coast as our families so we can visit when needed. San Francisco was also a contender, but we've both been there a dozen times and it's nearly as expensive as New York. We'd like our sabbatical to be easier and cheaper than what we're doing now. Boston seems more expensive than New York and we already live in New England now. My hometown of Atlanta was on the list, but I've been there, done that, and am not all that interested in temporarily living there. We also considered my husband's hometown in the Midwest, but he kind of feels the same way about it that I do regarding Hotlanta.

What we do know we want is a decent sized city with stable economy, art, music, theater, decent housing, proximity to outdoor recreation, fine dining, and a place we've never spent much time in, if at all. And so we're considering..... Nashville.

Let me say that when I tell people I'm from Hotlanta, the first thing they say is "Say what?! But why don't you have a Southern accent?" These people are truly puzzled I am accent-less and do not resemble Blanche from the Golden Girls or the entire cast of Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias combined. This leads me to believe they also expect everyone from the Midwest to talk like they're reenacting Fargo from beginning to end.

In any case, many people (probably the same ones I've just been complaining about) assume Nashvegas is all country all the time with the likes of Miley and Billy Ray Cyrus dancing their Achy Breaky Hearts right down Music Row. However, Nashville actually has a thriving jazz, folk, rock and Christian music scene. They even have live music at the airport. I like eclectic, this is good with me. It also means my husband could make connections to design more CD covers, which he loves.

I also like that Nashville has actual seasons. Though we'll be there in the summer and or fall, I still like knowing it's possible snow arrives in winter. There's plenty of nearby outdoor recreation via river and mountains, art, bars, restaurants, and a decent cost of living. These are all aspects we want full-time from a city, so it's possible we could consider relocating. However, right now our only intention is to explore another city and get some perspective on what it is we want out of life.

So while most sabbaticals are usually reflective of professional academia with paid leave, ours will be a non-paid, non-professional break from the city. The Boston University School of Theology's sabbatical guidelines are as follows: A sabbatical is an extended period of time granted for professional development and spiritual renewal away from normal ministerial responsibilities and in a manner that is not possible during the busyness of a typical work year. Sabbaticals are not vacations, but carefully planned periods of time devoted to study, reflection, rest, and renewal. They frequently become a path to understanding one’s vocation in new ways or as a vehicle for a transformed sense of pastoral identity. Some pastors travel, experience different cultures, learn new skills, or spend time reading during a sabbatical. It is also possible to think of even doing something like a semi-monastic retreat. This is a time to experience “being” in addition to “doing”; it should be a time of freedom and authenticity. One of the goals of a sabbatical is to return to the congregation renewed and refreshed.

We too would like to approach our sabbatical as a means of spiritual renewal, professional growth, rest, reflection, and a transformed sense of identity. We also may end up adding additional cities on our list to consider, but for now, we're thinking about Nashville. If anyone has taken their own self-appointed sabbatical or suggestions on cities to try, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

For more information on taking a sabbatical, check out some of the following books:

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