Two and a half years after my husband died, I quit my job without having another job lined up. It turned out to be the best decision I ever made.

After my husband died, I took the two-week bereavement leave that my employer offered. In retrospect, it wasn’t nearly enough time but I didn’t realize it then. When I returned to work, my manager gave me a reduced workload and let me have flexible work hours so that my work day ended when my daughter got home from school. It was a godsend, but it didn’t last. Seven months later, my manager left the company for greener pastures. With the arrival of a new manager came an increased workload, late night and weekend emails and almost daily fire drills; my work-life balance became a distant memory.

The following summer, during the height of the Covid pandemic, my employer offered partially paid leaves of absence to help employees that were burned out from working and helping their kids with distance learning at the same time. I jumped on the opportunity and took a seven-week leave. Having the time off was amazing, but I found myself doing a daily mental countdown of how many days I had left and dreading going back to work. I had hoped the time off would refresh and re-energize me, but I returned to work resentful about coming back.

That fall I became increasingly unhappy and stressed out at work. It had dawned on me that I had eight years left with my daughter before she went off to college, and I didn’t want to spend that time working constantly. The last straw was when my manager emailed me the day after Christmas, while I was on vacation, asking me to create a report due before the end of my vacation. By New Year’s, I had decided to quit, but I didn’t want to find another job just yet. I felt I needed a break from working so analyzed my savings and expenses and calculated how long I could afford to be unemployed.

In early March, I gave my manager 30 days notice and felt a weight lifted off my shoulders. On my last day, I went into the office for the first time after years of working remotely to turn in my laptop and phone. I practically skipped out of the office.

I had decided to take up to one and a half years off from work. I had worked consistently for the last twenty years except for maternity leave (which doesn’t count as a break) and a somewhat stressful nine-month stint of unexpected unemployment. I figured eighteen months would give me two summers off with my daughter. Spending more time with her while she still wanted to hang out with me was my top priority. She was ten so I knew I had a short window before she entered the treacherous teen years and would want some distance from me. I also wanted to spend more time with my mom who had been having a lot of issues with her memory.

During my first month off, I read a handful of self-help books offering advice on how to find a career with purpose. One book, Reboot Your Life, extolled the benefits of taking a sabbatical and gave me some great ideas of what to do during my time off. My big plan for the summer was to take a three-week road trip with my daughter and niece out west. I spent countless hours carefully researching and planning our itinerary and where to stay in a spreadsheet.

At some point after I quit, I learned from a friend that I could collect Social Security survivor benefits due to a little known “special earnings limit rule.” I wrote about this in detail in another blog post. As a result I collected survivor benefits for most of my time off.

My daughter didn’t get home from school until 4:30pm so even with all my career exploration, trip planning and tai chi and qigong classes, I still had some free time during the day. Since I had just received my second Covid booster, I figured it was good timing to dip my toes back into the dating pool. I did some quick research on the best dating app for the “over 40 crowd,” then joined Match.com. The last time I had been on Match was almost 20 years earlier, and I was terrified.

My first date was with a kind, intelligent and handsome man who shared a lot of my interests and life goals. Within a few weeks of dating, I discovered he was also fun, adventurous and had a great sense of humor.

It was time for the trip I’d been planning for months. My daughter and I were so excited for our adventure. The plan was to fly to Denver, rent a car, pick up my 20 year-old niece, then drive a 2,000+ mile loop that would take us through seven states, six national parks and four national monuments in three weeks before flying back home. Besides hiking around the stunning national parks and monuments, we went white water rafting, zip lining and to a rodeo. The trip was even more fun than I had hoped and, while I was away, I talked to my new beau every night.

I had come to the realization that I didn’t want to change careers. While I didn’t love my job, I wasn’t able to identify another career that I would definitely like more AND would pay at least the same. As the sole breadwinner, I didn’t feel like I could take a pay cut, and my top requirement was to have better work-life balance and more flexibility. To that end, I decided to look for short-term contract assignments, ideally 6-9 months long, instead of a permanent job. In my dream world, I would find a new contract assignment every fall that would end right before the summer, allowing me to take the summer off.

That fall, eight months after my break started, a former coworker reached out to me about an opportunity doing contract work for her employer, temporarily filling in for someone going on maternity leave. It was the ideal setup. While I had been initially expecting to take a longer break, I felt ready to go back to work. I had had a wonderful summer off traveling with my daughter and building a relationship with my now boyfriend. More importantly, I no longer felt overwhelmed and burned out, and my mindset towards life and work had changed.

It’s now been two and a half years since I started the contract job, and I’ve been working for the same company ever since in a series of contract gigs. I’ve managed to take at least five weeks off every summer and to take long, fun trips with my daughter and boyfriend. Every time my contract comes to an end, I get a little nervous about getting another one, but the reward has been worth the risk.