A Gap Year On Life?

THE SURPRISING PLEASURE AND FORMIDABLE COST OF QUITTING IT ALL— AT LEAST FOR A WHILE.

- Deborah Needleman

About a year and a half ago I ditched a glamorous, well-paying job as a magazine editor, where I had not only creative freedom but an ample budget with which to realize my ideas. I bid it adieu with no particular plan, just a broad and burning desire to be free and a vague notion of maybe becoming a basket weaver. (Yes, that’s right.) Having toiled for a half-century on other people’s schedules (parents’, schools’, jobs’), I wanted to be not the boss of others but of myself, my time accountable only to me and those I loved. I longed to read more, and more haphazardly, allowing one thing to lead to the next. I wanted to travel and learn more about beautiful objects created by people of different cultures and traditions. Plus, I wanted to do work not just with my mind, as I always have, but with my hands, as well, which I never had. It’s not that I had no ideas about what I wanted to do—I had loads—just no sense of what it might look like, or how it might all go down.

Our lives inevitably narrow as we move through them. When we start out, so much is possible, even who we might be. As we make our way in years, each choice precludes others until—surprise!—I am not some transcontinental femme fatale moving from one torrid love affair to another but a 53-year-old lady who likes to garden, lives in downtown Manhattan with a husband and two kids, and has spent her working life in the magazine industry. We end up utterly specific.

But what if, when we’re older, we can light out again on the open road? Over the years we have cleared a lot of metaphoric brush. We know what makes us happy and what annoys the hell out of us. We’re more confident, less stupid, and maybe even a bit richer than we were in our youth.