Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” – John D Rockefeller

Is it still a “break” if I’m never going back? It’s now been eight years since I set off on my career break at 40 (or 41, but who’s counting!) I thought I would give a little update as I’m sure many of you are curious about how to take a career break in your 40s. But first, some background on my career break.

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Planning a Career Break at 40

I don’t know exactly when the seed was planted. I moved back to Chicago in 2006 after three years in Seattle, with plans to boomerang back out of there after a year or so. Promotions, complacency, a big recession, and an even bigger carrot at the end of a long stick ended up keeping me at the same company in Chicago for 11 1/2 years! For a while, I daydreamed about saving up for vacation and taking a month off, or taking advantage of my company’s sabbatical policy. But I didn’t want to keep coming back to the same job and the same city. I was more than ready to start fresh in a new city, but where? And more importantly, how? I would say I spent about 18 months to two years actively working towards this “mid-life sabbatical.”

Funding a Career Break at 40

As Gen-X’ers, we are really the first generation to be mostly reliant on self-funded retirement. Pensions are nearly non-existent and my peers and I often joke about working until we die. (We also grew up during the 80s peak of conspicuous consumption, spending our entire teenage paychecks on Benetton rugby shirts and Guess jeans. Who didn’t lust after Jake Ryan and his Porsche?!) So I surfed the credit card waves through my 20s and 30s, buying things I couldn’t afford and didn’t need. Thankfully, I eventually came around to my senses and started to reverse that trend. Unlike many others in my generation, I’ve been lucky on the employment front. I’ve never suffered a layoff and have never been fired, which meant I had been working since 1990, with never more than a two-week break between jobs. Even when I moved across the country. Twice. Call it a mid-life crisis, but I was ready to take a year off work at 40!

Saving Up for a Career Break

Ok, full disclosure here: I was in the right place at the right time and had some nice stock options that made this career break possible. I only had to wait 4 years for them to vest, haha! I used to hear of people taking a career break, or a gap year, and used to make all kinds of assumptions about how they did it. Honestly, had I not spent so much on dumb stuff, I could have done this much sooner. (If I had $1 for every Clinique “free gift” I got…) So, it’s not impossible, it’s actually quite achievable, but I wanted to be honest about how I did it. I also sold a lot of belongings, curtailed my travel in the year leading up to my career break, and reduced my expenses greatly, while at the same time trying to enjoy my last year in Chicago.

Career Break Plan

I left my job on a Thursday, spent Friday moving all of my belongings into a storage unit, spent a few days visiting with family, and then left the following Tuesday to hike around Switzerland for a couple of weeks. The ultimate goal of my break was to travel around and find a new hometown. I had a light route planned out to explore Salt Lake City, Flagstaff, and Tucson as potential hometowns. A few meetups with friends along the way further shaped my route. I certainly thought by the end of the year, I would be settling in somewhere and looking for a new full-time position to pick up my career where I left off. That didn’t exactly happen…

If you’re interested in the whole breakdown, I did a monthly recap during my career break, including how much I spent and where I went:

• Career Break Month 1 – August – Switzerland, Iceland, Kansas, Denver
• Career Break Month 2 – September – Colorado, Salt Lake City, Oregon, Lake Tahoe, Death Valley, St. George
• Career Break Month 3 – October – Arizona, New Mexico
• Career Break Month 4 – November – Arizona, New Mexico, Maui
• Career Break Month 5 – December – moved to Tucson!

Two Years in Tucson

After three months on the road, I arrived in Tucson and liked what I saw. I spent nearly a year just enjoying all the great things to do in Tucson and working a part-time retail job at Banana Republic. By the end of 2018, I was tired of paying $300 a month for crappy health insurance and decided to get a full-time job for the benefits. I stumbled onto a job fair at a local resort and was hired as the full-time concierge, and omg, is it the perfect job for a travel writer. I get to talk hiking, sightseeing, and food with hotel guests, and I’m able to squeeze in some travel writing in my downtime. Best of all, most of the time my schedule is 12-8 and I’ve never been happier in my life…I am NOT a morning person, so this schedule makes a WORLD of difference. I don’t even feel like I need a day off because I am just getting so much done with my mornings free.

And...I wrote my first book!

Amidst starting a new career as a concierge, a publisher reached out to me on LinkedIn and asked if I would like to author the newest book in their "Day Trips by Theme" series. I thought it was a spam email at first, but it turned out to be true, and I spent my days off racking up 20,000 miles on my car doing research for Arizona Day Trips. And then I left Arizona...

Moving from Arizona to Utah

If there's one thing people know about me, I am not one to sit around and complain! If I don't like something, I change it. I had a great two years in Tucson, but the summers were just too brutal. I hated hibernating from May through October and settling for short walks with the dog. So, I moved to Utah! I found a concierge position at St. Regis in Deer Valley in Park City and instantly fell in love with winter weather again. It's safe to say Bailey is much happier living in the mountains than in the desert! This girl loves the snow!!!

And then COVID hit! I worked a whopping six weeks at the ski resort before being laid off, and the resort shut down entirely. Given that I'd just moved to Utah, unemployment was a long-drawn-out process that I didn't have time to wait for. So, I hustled. I worked at the Amazon warehouse, delivered food through GrubHub, and eventually came back to St. Regis as a pool attendant for the summer before finally getting my concierge job back in the fall of 2020. It's been non-stop busy ever since!

Once travel began to open up again, I reached out to my publisher to see if they'd be interested in a Utah Day Trips book and they said yes! So, I began another year of intense travel, traveling all over Utah on my days off. I skied all 14 Utah ski resorts (while also working overtime and many 6-day weeks!) My second guidebook, Utah Day Trips by Theme was published in July 2022!

There was no 7-year update because I briefly went back to the corporate world, albeit still in hospitality. I HATED the monotony of a Monday through Friday job again. Only having Saturday and Sunday off, when everyone else is out hiking, skiing, shopping, etc, was a real bummer. So, earlier this year I moved back to the job I love and am so happy being a concierge again. It's meant to be!

What's Next?

I've now been in Park City for five and a half years and love every minute of it! While it's ridiculously expensive, I have a great commute and wake up to mountain views every day. We have tons of snow to play in, but no bitter-cold winters like the Midwest. It's truly perfect. People keep asking what my next book will be, but I'm not ready to relocate just yet. I can confidently say I will live in Park City for the foreseeable future, or until I can't afford to live here anymore. Just look at all the cool things I have to do nearby:

• Park City Summer
• Park City Winter
• Park City Restaurants

Besides living in the mountains, I have the deserts of Southern Utah just 4-6 hours away. I love escaping to St. George, Cedar City, or Moab when I have a few days off in the shoulder seasons. There are just so many cool things to see in Utah, and while I covered a lot of ground while writing my book, there's still so much to do!

Have you taken a career break or are you thinking about it? What's holding you back, what questions do you have? Feel free to reach out on Facebook or even in the comments section and I'm happy to respond!