252: Taking an Accidental Sabbatical with Mel Dizon

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Do the work that I need to to feel like I can trust myself to make the right decision and to move into something else and to listen to that piece of me that really wants to go and not go into something because I'm totally panicked and go into something because it actually feels like the right move for me. And when I stop doing that, I metaphorically could lose the privilege of doing that. And I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to work hard at what I'm doing and that means I'm going to work hard at this Accidental Sabbatical.

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Welcome back Free Timers. I am delighted to introduce you to my dear friend Mel Dizon today. She is a writer and an editor in the midst of what she calls an accidental sabbatical. We've been substack accountability buddies just helping each other, encouraging each other to not only get it started but to hit publish. To do it over and over again. And as Mel would say, not to babysit the work. Her substack An Accidental Sabbatical is for mid career people in the middle of the reinvention mess. People for whom they need a break or are taking a break or their life circumstances ended up at a break. But it's not necessarily as structured as the ones that we talked about previously in the episode with DJ Dodona, which I'll put in the show notes. I adore Mel and we've both hired each other over the last 10 plus years, so we've worked together many times in Many ways. And I just so appreciate her honest, funny writing about her experience from the middle of the mess, not wanting to retire, and yet not yet knowing what's next. So, Mel, welcome to the show.

Oh, thank you so much for having me, Jenny. This is so exciting.

I want to get into some of the fears around publishing this journey, but let's start with an accidental sabbatical itself. I'm really curious to hear how you would describe an accidental sabbatical and even how that term came to you.

I've sort of came academia and I understand that term sabbatical, and it's very sort of structured. Most people think about it as, oh, you get them when you're a tenured professor after you've been there for a while, or you've been at your company for 10 years or so, and they say, hey, go off and get some leadership training and you'll be more valuable when you get back. But there are also these accidental sabbaticals that either you kind of make happen, maybe unconsciously, or maybe consciously, or let's say you get laid off or you get fired, maybe because you're in a career that you don't love or that's not totally right for you and you get fired because it's just not the right fit. Maybe you reach a breaking point and you don't really know what's next, but you just know for sure you can't keep doing what you're doing. A lot of people might have a life event like an injury or a birth, death. Maybe they're taking care of their parents. They're like in the Sandwich generation, or they're taking care of their young kids, whatever it is. Like everybody has an equally accidental reason that they wind up here and it's this sense of, I'm here, I know I'm not done, I'm not done. And I don't want to retire, but I don't want to repeat what has come before.

In one of your origin story posts, you said, beginning in January. We're recording this right toward the end of the year. The intense pull I felt to burn the boats raged through every bone in my body. It felt like the ground beneath me was unsettling. And night after night, I had dreams of almost dying, getting lost, being stuck, and not finishing something. On the nights I wasn't dreaming, I just stared at the ceiling, desperately wanting to get up, to clean anything I could get my hands on. But cleaning was your coping mechanism. What was starting to come in in that moment at the beginning of January that ultimately led to your sabbatical starting in August of that year.

A little bit, I think, is just energetically I sort of had done everything I could do. I couldn't grow much more in the role that I was. And I had gotten to the place where, okay, I'm now I'm repeating programs or approaches. And I was at an organization, a nonprofit, that just wasn't going to go much further. And I didn't feel like whatever I was doing was going to be supporting my growth at all. So that was part of it. And I was there for quite a long time. And I had left for like six months to go to another job. And then I got brought back in and I sort of knew getting brought back in that it wasn't going to be forever. I needed to create a succession plan because when I left the first time, nothing got implemented. And so they were in a tough spot. And I really loved the organization and the community. So I said, okay, I'll come back and kind of make a better transition. So that was part of it. And numerologically speaking, I will say there's a little bit. I'm in a nine year for those people who have any sense of numerology and life cycles. And I just felt this ending and I can't explain it other than this like massive energetic urgency that I felt that no matter what, I couldn't keep doing this thing anymore. And I felt this pent up ambition, I guess I would call it, of, oh my gosh, I just want to explore more, learn more, grow more and be challenged more. I think I also wrote a post about how I had talked to you years, a couple years before of feeling like, okay, I'm going to be done December of I don't even know what it was. Maybe it was 2019, not, not sure. So I had this on my radar. And then this, to me felt like one of those things where people will get together and they break up a million times and they keep getting back together and then they finally break up and there's no going back. And that's what this felt like to me. I just felt, this is going to end. This is the final breakup and I'm ready to go.

Energetic urgency is such a powerful phrase as is pent up ambition. And it was a prestigious job. Like, I know that you were doing really important work that you felt connected to. You were making an impact. You were interviewing luminaries in this space. And yet it sounds like every bone in your body was saying, again with this pent up ambition. Like there's something waiting, there's something new. You also say you've been earning watermelon coins for 30 years without a break. So I'm always curious, what are watermelon coins? Cause I only hear this phrase from you, but also it's money. Where does it come from?

I don't know. I started referring to that. To me, it's more playful. It feels like a more bright, light compensation for the work that I do. And this is weird. I don't think I've ever had to explain it. I can feel when they're watermelon coins and when they're just money.

Is watermelon coins a phrase like, does that?

No, I made it up.

You did?

I like to make up things that are, like totally random words matched together. And I like coins better than money. And watermelon is my favorite. So I like. It's an energetically light, wow. Representation of cash.

I love it. You have a cute little emoji for watermelon, so. Okay. That's a fun fact. What's interesting to me is that you had not really taken a break from earning these watermelon coins in your entire career.

Yeah.

And now you're at this juncture. So you're over 50, you're mid career, and yet nowhere near retirement. In your soul. What permission did you need to give yourself to do that final breakup with the great job that you had, knowing that you have a kid who's going to enter college and you're going to have those bills that you want to help with coming up? I mean, that must have been a really. I want to put words in your mouth of a tough decision, but it seems like you needed to give yourself a new permission that you had never given yourself before.

It is something I think I've tried to give myself for the better part of a decade. I'm always like, oh, no, I'm going to take time off. And I am terrible at it. And so I fail always. And part of that has to do with I actually really just like work. And the other part of that is I have fear. I just have an immense amount of fear that I'm going to somehow wind up a bag lady, despite all evidence to the contrary that I've always figured it out. But that fear is just very.

Real. And I feel it when I think about my daughter. Actually, yes. Most people think this is the dumbest time. Can you think of a worse time to decide that you're not going to work when your daughter's about to go off to college. And at the same time, for me, it was like the obvious answer. She's going to go somewhere, she's going to go off to college. And I want to be here for this year. It's a big year and I didn't want to. Oh, I can't go there because I've got this work thing that I have to do that in the grand scheme of things, is not more important to me than the time I get left with her. And I've always prioritized my time with her, but this year has been so different. Even just the last three months. She'll say, let's go do this. And I say, great, as I'm still doing contract work, but I get to make my own hours and I'm not bound by any schedule or meetings or anything. So I just get to do a lot, which is really nice and it is lovely. The other thing is my dad is getting older and I've spent some more time with him. We don't live in the same area, so spending more time with him. And I want to be there for him. And he's 88 and declining, and I want to have that time. I want to be able to get out to Virginia whenever he needs me. And it's like a baby. There's never a good time. You can't really put it on a spreadsheet and say, what a great time to have a baby. There's no such thing. And this is another one of those things. No such thing.

Sounds like one of the big permission slips was permission to prioritize family during this time. What about the money piece? Because. Because that fear is so visceral for many of us. You needed to give yourself permission not to earn money for a certain amount of time or watermelon coins.

What was that like in terms of making this decision? Knowing that you finally put a date on the calendar August 1st? I can only imagine how much fear started coming to the surface once that date was set.

Oh, gosh, yes. And actually, just you saying it, I'm already getting hot because I'm still freaking out about it.

Also, I used the M word again, so.

Well, it's funny, you've had a front row seat to my constant fear, but, oh, my gosh, I can't do this. So one of my favorite coaching questions is, what if X were no longer important to you? And I just had to keep going back to this question and it was, what if making this money right now was no longer important to you? What would you do? And so I had a really long list. I could come up with a million reasons why, if it were no longer important to me, what I would do. And then I had to just get into the reality that I was going to feel fear. I was going to be really scared probably every day. That is okay. It was going to be okay. And there was something about almost wanting to have my back up against the wall. I feel like that's what it was. It was this thing that I had to be in a place of, oh, excuse me, to move to where I was going to go next. Kind of the idea of what got me here isn't going to get me there. And, yeah, I could just keep earning and just doing that thing, but nothing interesting or big was gonna change if I didn't do something internally that was really different. And for me, that was giving up safety.

That's so powerful just to realize that. And probably there's part of you that's hoping you didn't have to give up the safety. And yet, as you could tell for years on end, nothing was changing. Yes, in parallel to this, you were dabbling with a substack. And for anyone listening, I'm newly obsessed with the platform, but insert whatever software, it's less about the substack. It's the fact that having worked as a writer and a copywriter and a therapist and a coach and many different things in your career, writing really was a threat for you your whole life and your whole career. Right around the time of starting your sabbatical, you were dabbling in. And I know because you were friends, you said you probably posted your substack and then took it down and posted it and took it down maybe four or five times. You tell me what was going on when you were toggling. Should I do this or should I not? So there's not only the decision of, should I enter the void of an accidental sabbatical, AKA one that does not have a clear plan or a clear end, but in parallel, there was this urge you were having to share about it. And yet the fears were having you maybe. No, no, don't do that. Take it down. Just. I'm curious, right in that window of time, what was going through your mind?

There were two reasons. The first one is, while I was a writer, I started getting paid for writing around 1993 or so. I was also a social worker and a teacher and then a therapist. And then in my most recent role, I was the director of education for a Parkinson's organization. And I have always been very nervous to share personal writing. First of all, I couldn't share and have the students see it and say, oh, you know, Misty believes this or that. As a therapist, I certainly didn't want to kind of put my own personal stories out there. Now that I'm sort of free of everything, I felt permission to be able to be myself in my writing. And then the second piece was. So I kept getting rid of them because I still had that old me in there. Oh, my gosh, I can't share this. I can't share it. But then I thought, oh.

What would happen for me if I was able to share a little bit of this personal journey? Because I just kept hearing so many people talking to me about they're feeling a similar thing. So I had these two little voices saying, you can't talk about yourself, and then the other one saying, you better talk about yourself. It can be valuable and maybe you'll learn something. Which is exactly what I found out when I finally committed to publishing and making them public. I certainly wouldn't be where I am now, where I was three months ago. So the clarity has helped a lot. And I don't think that clarity would have been as quick if I had just kept doing it in my journal.

Yeah, it seems like hitting publish holds you accountable a little bit like that back of the wall feeling. If people are reading about your journey and you're also choosing a different theme every month, and it seems like it's facilitating not just your own exploration, but this accountability piece and then conversation. I know that when you welcome people, when you have new subscribers, you ask them to reply, and in some cases, maybe you even get on the phone. So you're hearing from a lot of other people, too. I'm curious if there are themes that you're noticing when you talk to other accidental sabbaticalers.

I think the big two themes are fear. It's either people that a lot, a lot have gotten laid off. Right? I mean, we're just in a time where people are getting laid off and unexpectedly, and it's allowing them to say, okay, well, I don't owe anything to this company. Maybe I don't owe anything to this career anymore. They look for something else. But there's definitely fear that I spent many years in not leaving because I was scared. So there's a lot of those people. And then I would definitely say my community is over indexing on this idea that retirement is of zero interest to them. And so they're looking at their life and saying, I could have a good 30 years left to work. How do I want to spend my time? What do I want to do? And they're willing to entertain many more ideas than they've had in the past. And whether that means because oh hey, I packed after 25 years, I already paid off my student loans finally, or I paid off my mortgage or I got a divorce or hey, I thought my kid was going to go do this and now they're doing this and they're all set and I have a little bit more freedom and or if you have no freedom at all, I just think it's a time period where people are just entertaining many more questions and many more options than they ever thought they would.

Be.

Right back just after this Hi, this.

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Going back to the fear around the writing and sharing piece. I mean, I've talked on my substack about what gets me to hit publish, but I don't know about you from your the fear doesn't completely go away. And it certainly didn't go away just because I launched the whole thing. It's kind of hovering around almost every post. At least if I'm doing it right. I'm writing about stuff that's alive and in process. One of your mantras that you heard Elizabeth Gilbert say in Big Magic, so I might be paraphrasing from her to you. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I love your own mantra of not babysitting. The Rusty nail. Rusty nail because you felt rusty in your writing. What is helping you move forward, not just in your life. In the accidental sabbatical, in the uncertainty and liminal space of it all, what do you tell yourself what gets you to actually hit publish with each subsequent post?

That feeling of a little bit nervous I'm pretty sure I feel very clearly when something is not right. And I just, oh gosh, I'm not publishing that. It feels like not my best work. If you looked at my substack drafts, you'd see like 15 drafts that are thought were great ideas and end up being terrible. And two days ago, I was trying to do many things at once and I was actually on a zoom call prepping for a course I'm delivering and I hit publish on something that was supposed to be in draft and it is not even remotely close to being edited. Like, it was a mess and I saw the screen saying it published and it went to all my subscribers and I had a heart attack. Oh my God. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. They're going to think that I am the worst writer in the entire world and what happened to her and what is she doing? And it was a really good experience, actually, because in the 53, 54 posts I post that, you know, obviously never happened. It was a very strange thing that happened. But it reminded me of how much I care about this and how much I am thinking and trying to be discerning and trying to make sure that I'm delivering what is useful to readers. So that was an interesting feeling that I had. And I would contrast that with the feeling of nervousness about publishing something and doing it anyway and then walking the hell away from the computer and my phone. And I don't have any notifications whatsoever sent up anywhere. So I don't get any notifications. I have to go find them myself if something happens. But I have to walk away and know that for whatever reason, at that moment, I felt it was important to communicate this. And I'm going to be okay with that. I'm not going to go babysit that decision, that writing that sentence, those likes and replies and comments. And I'm just going to move on because I have to think about that in every scenario in my life. And I used to be somebody who babysat every conversation I ever had. So babysitting my writing is just par for the course. I would say something that I would fret about for days or weeks or months and I would see the person, I'd say, oh, gosh, remember when I said this? And they said, no, I have no idea what you're talking about. And here I am worried about it. So I have a history of babysitting my work as a human, and I knew that in order for this to be successful, I couldn't do that anymore. And I couldn't worry about how good my personal writing was at the beginning, or else I would have never gotten off. I've been writing out Parkinson's for the last six years. And before that, I was writing about other people's work, and I was writing what other people were doing and selling and communicating and caring about. And that's really easy. I mean, it's profoundly easy. Free to hide behind something else. And writing my own stuff is a whole nother world of nerves and excitement and growth and, oh, my gosh, what the hell are you think you're doing?

Have you had moments where you hit publish and you're not babysitting the writing itself, but you're still afraid? What will people think? What will they say? What are the comments going to be like? Or have I just completely humiliated myself? Have you had those posts? Not the one that went live without you intending, but from the actual content of what you're sharing?

I wrote a series called My Shit with food, part one, two, and three, and I probably spent 50 hours on those posts and probably had them ready to go weeks before. And I was like, nope, I can't post these. Can't post these. Never going to post these. This is too much into my own head. This is going to make people think that I'm a complete crazy person and I can't be that person. I have to be the not crazy person. And I finally, at some point, got them together and I left them in my drafts and I just went about my life and I kept feeling this urge to, oh, this kind of feels undone. This feeling of for my own good and for people that are in a similar situation, this is going to feel helpful and I need to do it. So I went back and I scheduled them and published them, and I closed my eyes to them. So those were some big ones. And I will say one of the things that I kind of kept going back and forth on that post is I don't want to ever pretend that my thing is bigger or worse than it is. And so I am very worried right now about trauma comparison. It's something I think about a lot. And I think we have in many ways glorified trauma. We've given this language to these kids around trauma, and everybody has to have theirs, and everybody has to talk about that and get people talking about that and saying, oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry, and. And I don't want that. I'm careful of not wanting that to be part of the story and rather just being, hey, we're all human. We all have these things that we're all walking around with. And can we get away from some of the labels and the glorification of having these? And I'm still struggling with it. I'm still really learning about it and trying to understand where I fall with it. Like the Me Too movement. There's this thing in me that, you know, I had my own Me Too movement. I'm not going to write about it because I have no interest in getting sort of reactions to it. But as a therapist, one of the things that I noticed is my clients were saying, me too is the worst thing that ever happened to them. They felt more unseen, like their thing was so insignificant, or they felt more alone than they ever had. And what we would talk about is, well, yeah, because the Me Too movement you're seeing on TV are a bunch of famous people getting out saying, yeah, me too. But that's people who have gotten past the Me Too. The trauma of the Me Too piece. They've moved past a lot of the things and are now getting, I guess I should say, massaged. Oh, wow, you're amazing. You're so brave. You're so this, you're so that. And to the people where that's not the case, they're still sitting in it. That just feels yucky. And so I feel like there's a lot of that going on. And I'm worried about that on Substack. I'm worried about my own role in that, in Substack of trying to be part of a movement and being a little bit more discerning about what those movements are and how we can talk about them in a way that's helpful and not voyeuristic and not just comparison. People used to compare money. Now they're comparing drama. And I'm trying to figure out what to do with it.

Well, you've been so helpful for me on that end because I would not write about anything at all ever. If I were comparing, you know, I have a roof over my head, food and electricity. It's like there would be no rolling in dough sub stack. If I also listen to what feels super real and present for me of just how good I have it, you know, compared to so many. But then I know some have said, well, that in itself is patronizing, you know. Anyway, I wanted to ask you with the food posts, what was the reaction like? Because those were super helpful and resonant for me. And I do think you walk this line, this nuance really well. And you even started your career as a social worker in your early 20s, having to kind of walk this line of not comparative suffering or comparative grief, like letting everyone have their own process. What was the reaction like to the food posts? Did you look at the comments and then did anything come up for you in reading the comments? Because I know sometimes people hesitate to share the really personal stuff because it's hard to read people either trying to give advice or rah rah or it's sometimes harder reading the comments than hitting publish.

Yeah, I actually just had great response from that from people that just emailed me directly to comments. And me too. I get it. That is totally me. I resonate with that so much and I'm happy that I did it again. Like it's not something I could have done even a year ago because I wasn't at a place to do anything, to feel like I was going anywhere. And I think it helped to say hey, I'm really in this mess right now, but I'm actually going to try this different approach so let's see how this goes. And people appreciated that that was the feedback is I tried to be more dispassionate about the actual thing and say oh well if I did that and I was just gonna be sort of matter of fact about it, here are some five things I'm gonna do differently that I did. And it's really kind of crazy which I haven't written any sort of follow up about it but I will eventually is it's so weird how just having something to check off my list that was an approach I've never taken before about it has changed my feelings on it, my beliefs about myself, my everything about it. It's weird. I look back and think that was a really great thing that I did. I'm really glad I did it. And you brought up the idea of advice and I think we've both talked about this with each other is this sort of allergy to advice right now and on the other side like getting constantly getting this feedback that I should be giving advice that I should take everything that I have done and learned and turn this into more how to and turn this into I need to provide value otherwise people aren't going to pay and people aren't going to keep reading and I need to be like what are you going to do now? And I am so not in that place right now, just sort of allergic to it. I don't want to read advice from people and I certainly don't want to give it. And so part of this post Was that feeling of how do I tell the story and then share what I'm gonna try without it being so self important and so self indulgent that there's no value for anybody else, while also not giving advice, which is the line I'm having a challenge with. I'm trying, but it's the thing that sort of comes up for me all the time.

Totally. It's like the advice makes it in the first draft and then it's just looking at it thinking, okay, how do I untie the bow? As our mutual writing coach, Sarah Fay would say, the day we're recording, this is officially your three month anniversary of this accidental sabbatical. Did your fears and uncertainties around it change in month one and month two or even today as we're recording this? So, like in the beginning, it's so scary, but some part of you knows you gotta do it. You want your back against the wall. How have those fears transformed or transmuted to where we are today?

The big issue, I guess that influenced where I'm feeling is I quit my main role and then stayed on as an editor in chief because I've been the editor in chief for so long there and they didn't have somebody to pick that up. And so I was doing some contract work. I've been delivering a course that I created over the past 18 months or so. So I've got those two things and the editing ended and the course is going to be finished next week. I did that thing again where I have while it might just be a little dingy, it certainly is a dinghy. It's like my little life draft that I took to bridge these two months. And then writing now it's just done. The fear has not come, gotten less. And the reality of it is more so now because now all the money's gone, all the money's cut off and I am in a mode of fear. But it isn't as intense as it was. And I think that's the reality of, oh well, we already have lived two months without my salary. We're totally fine and we're going to be fine. And that fear, I can't even explain it. Like, what do I do? Who am I if I don't have this fear that I'm not going to figure it out. And that is an interesting question that I cannot answer. And now that I'm free, I'm really free. And I'm curious to see what's going to happen over the next couple of months. I'm sure I'LL be able to distract myself over the holidays and be like, well, this is a time for slowdown anyway. But I am trying not to also babysit my budget.

Good one.

Which is like, weird because I'm definitely the one who keeps track of the money in the family, the one on my own client. And I have a spreadsheet for everything and I go through everything. And so I'm trying not to babysit that every day because I do have a daily heart attack when I do. And I just know that gonna be fine. I'm 52. I've never in my life not figured it out. And I'm trying to learn how to be the person that doesn't have to have the fear. Because that's really what it comes down to. I, like, have to have a problem to solve and I have to have the fear.

Right. Like, that becomes its own addiction of sorts.

Yes.

Addiction to the drama of it or to the fear. The fear is more comfortable for a lot of us. This is why I'm fascinated by how sometimes success is more triggering than being in the liminal space and the uncertainty. Because it's like we're used to that part. Yeah, we're used to worrying and managing and controlling and cleaning and, you know, that's the kind of like. For as uncomfortable as it can be in another way, at least for me, it can also be a sort of comfort zone. It's like, oh, I know what this is feel. It's like the devil you know versus the devil you don't. And I sometimes think to myself, oh, if only I had more fill in the blank then I think, Jenny, what would you do if 10x a flood, a tsunami of interest or success or the thing you say you want comes in? You might not be any happier. You might be overwhelmed and needing to say no and stressed about disappointing people and getting super frazzled. Like, I'm not trying to also limit any abundance or success, but just to say that, yeah, I resonate with what you're saying. Just who would I be if I was still doing the same things, just without all that fear? Fear attached.

Yeah. So that's the whole geography. Wherever you go, there you are. So wherever I go, whoever clients I get, I'm still here. I'm just me. And I'm still the person who gets scared, the person who doesn't sleep, the person who worries a lot. And so the intention for me around this accidental sabbatical is to give myself enough space to. I'm not saying I'm going to get rid of it. I mean, fear is a great thing. It's super helpful. But how much can I let it go away so that it's not a default? So that not everything has to be worried about? I've got a teenager and I worry that she's not worrying. What is that? Why do I have to worry that she's not worrying? That's not helpful. It's trying to figure out who am I without a problem to solve and who am I without having to worry about everything.

We'll be right back just after this.

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You wrote a great post on Please don't worry for me, I'll link to it in the show notes. You might have written this one a little bit tongue in cheek, but one of your posts is what I need to do so I don't get fired from my own sabbatical. Oh yeah, now what would that even mean, to get fired from your own sabbatical? A and B this two part question, in practical terms, do you have some kind of timeline where you're saying, all right, this can be accidental and messy for X amount of time, but once it crosses Y threshold, I gotta reel it in?

I sort of gave myself six months. It's sort of a six months or X, whichever one comes first. And I haven't really written about this. I haven't told the whole story of why I'm here, why I took this accidental time. But a lot of it was the six months. And also until I trust myself to make a decision and I don't feel like I'm in the place to make a decision right now. And so I'm holding off for that. I'm trusting myself enough to know that I've always made decisions. I've always taken a step, taken action. I'm biased towards that. And the fact that I know that right now I cannot and should not and will not make a decision tells me that there's something there. There's something that's strong enough in me that I'm going to give myself this time. If that comes before six months, then I'll do it. If it doesn't, then around six months, I'll just start to evaluate and say, where am I and what would it look like? Why am I still at the place where I'm not quite right, ready to make a decision, and what do I need to do to support myself in getting there? So that's sort of a big part of it. And firing myself. I like to use that metaphor a lot of times. So when I think about jobs, I think about the jobs that we do, and then I think about we're in a contract with whoever we're doing the job for and they're going to pay us and we're going to deliver work. And I think about that no matter what I'm doing, let's say my gym, I cross the gym, I pay them money, and in return I want them to coach me. But that is too simple. So if I pay my money and I go in and I expect them to do a great job of coaching me, but then I'm not a great coachable athlete, then they'll kick me out. They'll say, you're more trouble than you're worth, and we're going to ask you to leave. We're going to ask you go to another gym. We just can't support you. I look at everything that I'm doing along those lines, like, okay, I've got a contract with myself. My contract is that I'm going to do the work that I need to. To feel like I can trust myself to make the right decision and to move into something else and to listen to that piece of me that really wants to go and not go into something because I'm totally panicked and go into something because it actually feels like the. The right move for me. And when I stop doing that, I metaphorically could lose the privilege of doing that. And I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to work hard at what I'm doing, and that means I'm going to work hard at this accidental sabbatical.

You might have already shared it in some way. We'll get to the permission slip soon. Again, I feel like your entire substack is a permission slip. What would you want to tell somebody who has either just been catapulted into this type of messy middle in their career, specifically mid career, or specifically invite them to into when it comes to their own accidental sabbatical?

When you're being catapulted into it, they're just practices. I can't think of it any other way but like the mini micro practices that we have to do that gets us to a state of a little bit of peace and we just have to tell ourselves, okay, not mine, not mine. All of the things that are going to come into your head of like, oh, I got fired because I'm not good enough. Oh, I got laid off, I didn't do my job. Oh, they could have laid off a bunch more people, but I couldn't do it, or oh great, now I have to take care of my parent. Why couldn't my brother X take care of my parent? Why does it always land on me? Like all of these things that we say to ourselves when it happens to us can help with practices, is to say, okay, not mine, thank you, not mine. I don't know where that idea came from, but not mine. I'm just gonna do what I need to do and I'm gonna figure this out because I have always figured everything out. If it's something where you are going to do it yourself, then learning to trust yourself to say, but you made the right decision, you made the right decision. You made the right decision and just say it over and over again. And also it may have been Penny Pierce who said this, but something about I don't have to worry about that or I don't care about that. Like when I will say, oh gosh, but we have to pay for this thing in November. And that I wasn't expecting. Okay, I don't care about that right now. Like, I don't care about that right now. Okay, great. I'm not being irresponsible, I'm not being delinquent. I'm just saying right now, while I happen to be doing the dishes or writing this post, I don't have to care about that right now. So I'm doing a lot of right now work, best I can say, and learning to trust myself to do the right now work and that it's going to get me wherever I need to be.

Yeah, you have a lot of great practices. Like not right now or not for me or for you. We posted Those or it's not too late. Again, I'll link to this in the show notes, but that one was a big hit amongst readers too. It's not too late. It might be too late to become the number one Nobel laureate novelist. I mean, maybe, maybe not. But the point is, it's not too late to go for the feelings that that thing would bring you and go about it a different way.

It's that 10, 10, 10 thing, right? That 10 minutes, 10 months, 10 years. And that feeling piece was important to me to say, yes, I could go back and do this job that I'm being offered, but I'm gonna be in that same feeling. This is the worst dopamine hit in the world that somebody wants me and I'm not doing that. Do I want to be there? 10 minutes might feel good in 10 minutes, 10 months and 10 years. Like, no, thank you.

One of your favorite practices, I know for a long time has been writing letters. If we could give listeners like one, just do this next around writing a handwritten letter, what would it be? And then I'll link to your post calling people out for being awesome.

Oh, yeah, for me, a lot of times, because the fear of this is around money. I will constantly write a letter to watermelon coins. Dear Watermelon Coins. And what do I need it to know energetically? What am I worried about? What are things that I've thought of that have to do with watermelon coins? One of the things that I wrote was something about I'm feeling all great. Next thing I know, I'm applying to like Shell Gas station, right? To be a gas attendant. It's just, what will I do to make this pain go away? And a lot of people responded to that. And so I'll write in there and just say how I'm feeling about that, what is coming up for me? And sometimes I'll go through a period where I'll write that note every day if I'm really in the mess of the fear around money. And it usually just does something, getting it down on paper. It activates that system in your brain where it brings it up in your daily life where you can kind of give a little chuckle. And it's helpful to me. So I write letters, Dear Watermelon Coins. So I would do that. And then I always, always love the Dear Future me. I love futureme.org I do it a couple of times a year. And it is always so helpful to look back. And I try not to do it too far in advance because then I lose the thread. But sometimes I'll even do it in just two week increments where I'll say dearfutureme.org in two weeks, I hope that you are here, here and here. And then I get the letter. I'm like, oh my gosh, yeah, I set that intention and I did those things and here I am.

And you also have a children's book, the Handwritten Letter Project.

You know, everybody for, I don't know, the 80s, you know, the correct gratitude journal. And for some reason for me, that just never hit. I try to be grateful every day and that was sort of a practice. We always said what we were grateful for in my house. And I still do it. Every time I'm at a stoplight, I just start naming off the things I'm grateful for. But Gratitude Journal to me, just felt like I needed to go outwards with it. So one year I started doing the Handwritten letter project where I just wrote a letter every single day just to call people out for being great. And then I ended up writing one for kids. And it's maybe the thing I've gotten the most feedback on from people of how much they love doing it. Especially after the fact, they come back to me and say, oh my gosh, I did it for 30 days and now I haven't stopped in six months in or whatever. And it's just such a great way to call people out, to put something great into the world. And as a consequence, it just reminds you of, oh, you know, I think about that person and I'm so grateful to them for doing xyz. I want to bring a little bit more of that into my life. Like, I wish I had a little bit more of that. What would I want people to write their gratitude letter to me, it is just a great practice. And I wrote a book, probably 2011, I think I wrote the book and it was about career and it was all letters to help me get career clarity and help you get career clarity. And I've just found the practice lovely. Of course, you know, Elizabeth Gilbert is doing, and I'm sure a lot of people are following her doing those letters. But I would love it as a practice.

I'm going to link to that book. I want to campaign to bring it back, print on demand. But I know it's so much work to do that. The last question, Mel, if you could give fellow business owners permission to do something differently or drop something altogether, what would it be?

Oh, gosh.

And I should even say, we don't even Know business owners, it's like you might still be in a liminal space around that, around the form of the career. So just fellow seekers, what would it be?

It feels so trite, but I would say that I still have the voice in my head that is looking for approval or permission for somebody to be impressed or wow, good job. I had a girl and I am so much better now at not having one care about that at all. And it's not about the whole thing of I don't give any Fs about anything because I could not care more about stuff. Like I just care a lot. So it's not that. But I would just say whenever you go to do something, ask yourself the question, who am I doing this for? And if it is anybody but yourself, maybe think about it again, so many.

Powerful questions throughout this. I can't wait. Listeners, you definitely gotta revisit the show notes on this one. Mel, this has been such a joy to talk with you still in the early stages of your accidental sabbatical and before we hit record, I was saying, you know, you asked what my intention is, but I was saying just to not have it figured out and to be sharing your process. Anyway, I feel like we all need that permission slip right now or in various recurring phases of career and business. And so I just want to say I really appreciate what you're doing personally coming here on the podcast to talk about it on your three month sabbatical iversary.

Yeah.

And just sharing as much and as openly as you do. It is such a gift. And even your behind the scenes encouragement to me and support has been one of the greatest gifts of the year to just be in such close contact with you as we have been at various points. But to be in another wave of that right now is such a delight. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much for having me on. And I love that we get to have our little substack accountability. And how crazy that we have all these funny things where you'll post something and then I'll say oh my gosh, I have written that. And then I'll post something and you say oh my gosh, I just wrote that.

And the same day too. It's happened like three times now. Yeah, awesome. Well, we'll put an accidentalsabbatical.substack.com. we'll put that in the show notes. That's where you can find Mel's brilliant and beautiful posts and just looking forward to seeing what's next. We'll have to do another podcast episode either right around or right after that six month mark and see where things have evolved too.

Oh yeah, that would be fun and juicy. Thanks Jenny.

Thank you. Thanks everybody for listening.

If you've listened this far, you get a gold star.

Thank you.

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