What it’s like to be on a UX career break

I sometimes use Semrush’s title generator to come up with title ideas. The options while searching for career break included:

• What Are the Benefits of Taking a Break?
• Are You Ready for a Break?
• When Should You Take a Break?
• How Can You Make the Most of Your Career Break?
• Career Break: The Key to Unlocking Your Potential

I reject the idea of “making the most of your career break” or considering the break the “key to unlock your potential.” I haven’t talked much about the benefits or how you can tell if you’re ready for a break. The only obligation that I feel is to share my story, and do so simply and truthfully. The answers are already within you. Let’s jump in.

What is the PLC

A career break. Stands for Pro Leisure Circuit, a fancy term I heard from Michael Lopp who has been on the PLC a few times during his impressive career. He has written one of my favorite articles on the internet, Crazy Charlie’s Window. Talked about how people quit their jobs way before they hand in their resignation, a concept called Shields Down I’ve found helpful in my career. The Update, The Vent, and The Disaster is an article about 1:1 meetings that I really, really like that you should maybe send to your manager…

The main idea of the PLC is to have time and space to focus on whatever you like. Gardening, reading, video games, travel, learning German or a new coding language.

This is the crucial difference between a PLC and job hunting. There are no hard rules, but you’re not supposed to spend the break only doing work things like interviewing, applying to jobs, improving your resume or job-related skills. (More on this later)

How I made the decision

I was swimming in Dhërmi. Far from the shore, right at the furthest point I was legally allowed to swim to, where all the boats and jet skis reside. Klesti was with me. We had been there for a long time. Swimming, making eye contact with fish, and hanging out with Klesti are some of my favorite activities and I was doing all of them. Quiet. No one in sight. Joy.

Soon, an unexpected guest joined us. A two-meter tall flamingo. Floating. No one on it or looking for it. Ariana, what are you doing here?

It was strange that it came seemingly out of nowhere, but I was extremely weirded out by something I had read an hour earlier in Leave the World Behind, “a novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong.”

To save you the suspense, it’s an apocalyptic book though I didnt know this when I got it at the local library. A group of 10 flamingos had just jumped in the main characters’ pool… which was in the middle of nowhere where the sight of a flamingo was enough to make you rub your eyes in disbelief and ask the people next to you if they were seeing it too. Flamingos weren’t supposed to be there. I had been vomiting earlier that morning (still don’t know why – we all ate the same things, I was the only one who got sick). One of the kids in the novel starts vomiting randomly and his vomit is flamingo-colored? Eerie. At around 1 am later that day, the only other group at the bar we were having Negronis in started talking about… you guessed it, flamingos.

Was this the sign I was looking for to quit my job?

Not really since I had already quit my job 2 months before this happened.

I don’t think it’s ethical in regards to my previous employer or narratively necessary to dive into the specifics of the final sign that pushed me over the edge. But the signs were just as hard to miss as a tall flamingo floatie in the middle of the sea.

My reasons aren’t especially unique or anomalous, just a plain old ✨ heavy workload ✨ for prolonged periods ✨ to the point it’s no longer sustainable.

Zora Neale Hurston said ‘There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

I meditate every day. Some days I ask questions, some days I receive answers. Journaling, meditation, and walks are some of my tried-and-true ways to get in touch with my intuition. If you request signs from the universe, you have to acknowledge them when they come. And they will come. Be the elephant you want to see in a room <3

After agonizing over the decision for a long time, I made up my mind and told my manager.

[Click this if you want to read more about “is it time to quit your job?” signs]

Considerations (alternative title: How can I afford a summer break?)

I wasn’t planning on job hunting. Far from it, I was eager to not be in constant hunting, working, doing mode. At the time I quit my job to join the PLC, I had been working with American companies or clients exclusively for 3 years and 4 months.

I got used to a specific way of being. Being as being productive.

Partly fueled by American capitalism/climbing the distinctly American career ladder, but mostly an innate aversion to staying still (outside of planned activities like meditation or park hangs), I struggled to imagine a world where I would just sit still and do nothing for a month or two.

“We’re riddled with pointless talk, insane quantities of words and images. Stupidity’s never blind or mute. So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves; what a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying.”

from Gilles Deleuze in Negotiations (1985)

This would be very uncomfortable for me, but also a growing opportunity and likely something I wouldn’t be able to do as easily when I have kids or additional responsibilities. So I went for it.

I’m able to afford the break for a few reasons: I love having money so I love saving money. From when I was a kid, I had a piggy bank (still at my parents’ place) and used to save and even lend money to family members. I was able to save when I made $400/month working for Albanian companies. This continued when I started making $700/month and then over $5000 a month. For over a year, I worked in Albania and got paid an American salary so I was able to save ~90% of my salary. I was promoted twice in three years.

I’ve worked a lot on my money mindset and changing beliefs carried over from family and friends. You’re doing something immoral if you’re making lots of money. You can’t make money in Albania. You can’t make money and have a good work-life balance.

Books like You Are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero, Die With Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life by Bill Perkins, Secrets of Six-Figure Women by Barbara Stanny, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter–And How to Make the Most of Them by Meg Jay have really helped.

My money mantra now is “Money flows to and from me easily. I love spending it and I love making it.”

While I was relatively burned out, I don’t think I would’ve had a career break if it was hard to pull off financially despite knowing it would be the right thing for my health. I would support a friend in making that decision and consider it objectively right like yes prioritize your health, 100%. I’m just being honest that I don’t think I would’ve done it (might mean I still have some work to do, things to unpack in therapy – ugh).

How I’ve been spending my break

My 80-year-old grandma had never been on a plane.

This changed in May. She celebrated her 81st birthday in Vienna with my mom and Klesti and I. We had pastel de nata and coffee at Mercerie, a French patisserie. She visited our house for the first time. Went to the Austrian Queen Sisi’s museum. Took them (retired teachers) to the library of the University of Vienna (guaranteed success). Saw Stephansplatz and talked to the lady working at the small shop selling handmade hairbrushes and brooches and pins where I got grandma’s gift last year. Went to Sole, an Albanian-owned restaurant since the 80s where the Viennese opera members have dinner after the yearly concert. They brought out tiny fireworks with her cake and we wished her happy birthday. She made a wish, but didn’t tell us what for not to jinx it. Went to the park. Walked a lot. Met a neighbor from mom’s childhood house. Talked about dictatorship and communism as is common with Albanians who don’t meet each other often. Went to a classical music concert where the ex-neighbor played the violin. Cried at the concert (has happened 3 years in a row so I guess it’s my thing now). Asked grandma about the one type of cuisine she has never tried but would like to. Indian. I said “let’s go” and she resisted giving in to pleasure and her desires as she has been conditioned to do for decades. We went, ordered the right amount of food (rare), and she loved it. Long talks about the past and present. Brunch at Paremi. Schonbrun. Ice cream. Drinks. Espressos and tea.

They flew to Vienna on Thursday. Wednesday was my last working day. The megaparagraph above tells you how I spent my first 4 days on a break.

Well, I also took a nap before the music concert on Friday and woke up to an email from Google inviting me to a job interview. This is what I call A Sign™, quitting your job on Wednesday and getting an interview at ~the biggest tech company in the world on Friday.

While that opportunity didn’t ultimately work out, as someone who asks for signs, looks for signs, respects signs, talks to everyone about signs and how we should pay attention to the universe, this event told me I was on the right track.

I needed a break. I deserved a break. I could and should take my time in figuring out what I wanted to do next.

Since then, my days have been filled with a bit of everything.

Looked into creating a character map for The Candy House, a lovely book with 47 characters in it (didn’t do it).

Wanted to create a database for Albanian tattoo artists in the world (didn’t do it).

I visited the Maritime Museum in Hamburg (highly recommended) and noticed that a lot of the issues they talked about were things I helped tackle in my day-to-day work. I considered becoming a content designer specialized in data literacy and content management for our oceans. Realizing I don’t even know what I don’t know about the field, I reached out to Aquadocs and the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (say that 3 times fast) asking for a 30-minute chat, but they didn’t respond and I hadn’t thought about it until now.

I expect to start and stop caring about many other things during the duration of the break. Half-projects won’t be considered failures to any extent 🐸🔪 (shout out to my therapist)

Am I ready to go back?

Fun fact: This article has been done for a while except for this part. I wrote a rough structure based on questions I got on Instagram and this section title kept staring at me like 👁️.👁️

I could’ve just not included it, no one was pointing a gun to my head, but the article would feel very Leave the World Behind-y which is a synonym for unfinished (I’m still salty). Until a few minutes ago, I didn’t know how to answer, but now I do.

Am I ready to go back? No.

I’m not ready to go back to the way things were. To a world where you’ve “earned” a break when you hit a certain amount in your bank account or reach a certain level of exhaustion or interview at Google. To grinding—or doing, doing, doing—to the point I needed to schedule a break to just be.

But I am ready to go back to work in the world I’ve been visualizing during my break, one that’s balanced, intellectually satisfying and fun, where long-term sustainability is prioritized over growth.

I’m lucky to have been able to identify my “enough” before reaching crispy burnout levels, the type you need a year to “fix.” I’m not resentful towards what I do, execs, or the industry in the slightest and I understand what a privilege that is, to still love what I do and feel optimistic about the future of the field I work in. This was partly made possible by stoicism lessons and my constant stoic quest to focus on what’s within my control and not worry about anything else.

For example, the state of the tech job market in 2024 isn’t good. Layoffs, fewer open positions, lower salary offers than before. Looking at my LinkedIn feed, an article about a UX career break in 2024 that doesn’t mention the market seems unthinkable. But the state of the market wouldn’t even get a mention if I’d break down % wise where I’ve directed my mental energy during the break. “To the Stoic, life isn’t a juggling act between a thousand competing concerns. You have one concern, and that’s to tend your own garden, small or large as it is.” What can I do about the state of the market?! Rien de rien. It’ll get better, then it will get worse again, and so on. I focus on what’s within my control and I highly recommend trying to do the same and seeing where you end up.

“You don’t have to choose between being wholehearted, loving, kind, and soulful or winning. You can do both, but the bridge you must cross is vulnerability.”

– Dr. Pippa Grange, Sports psychologist and author of Fear Less: How to Win at Life Without Losing Yourself

To breaks, vulnerability, and unlearning 🥂

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Further reading/listening/pondering

• My Instagram: @theinnerdolphin
• How to do nothing – Resisting the attention economy by Jenny Odell
• Time Smart: How to Reclaim Your Time and Live a Happier Life by Ashley Whillans
• Die With Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life by Bill Perkins
• I Didn’t Do The Thing Today: On letting go of productivity guilt by Madeleine Dore
• Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle – Amelia Nagoski, DMA and Emily Nagoski, PhD
• Video: I Was An MIT Educated Neurosurgeon Now I’m Unemployed And Alone In The Mountains How Did I Get Here?
• Opinion: I Can’t Say No to Clients and It’s Destroying Me
• Articles I wrote that I should read more often I guess: I’ve been lying to you, Internalized capitalism, The “Never Enough” Neon Sign and Borrowed Goals
• Writing soundtrack 🎶: Love Life – Doja Cat