My Sabbatical Story: Why I Started Solaris

At some point, I realized I was running on autopilot, just trying to keep up.

I had stopped asking myself the most important question: How am I? Not "How's my project tracker looking?" or "Did I hit my KPIs?" but genuinely, how was I doing as an actual human being with, you know, feelings and a body that occasionally needed things like food and sleep?

For more than a decade in tech, I lived by an unspoken code. My grandfather used to say, "If you're on time, you're late." He meant it as a lesson in being prepared and respectful. I took that wisdom and somehow merged it with Silicon Valley's greatest hit: "If you're not available 24/7, someone else will be."

So there I was, juggling impossible deadlines, taking calls at 2 AM because someone in another time zone needed an answer right now, and genuinely believing that constant motion was the only way to prove I mattered. I thought a weekend getaway or an extra hour of sleep would fix the bone-deep exhaustion. It never did.

The Breaking Point

Then came the plot twist I hadn't seen coming: a company restructuring that eliminated my role.

In one surreal moment, I faced a choice: immediately start hunting for the next position, or do something I had literally never done in my adult life: actually stop.

It felt terrifying. What kind of ambitious person just pauses? But in the silence that followed, I finally saw the truth of how exhausted I really was.

Burnout Up Close

Here's the thing about burnout: it's your entire operating system crashing. Your brain gets foggy, your body starts staging a quiet rebellion, and your spirit? Completely checked out.

The cruelest part is that you often don't realize how depleted you are until you finally stop moving.

I thought I was holding it all together with duct tape and determination. Then my bloodwork came back: iron at 19, ferritin at 6, vitamin D at 12. My doctor looked at the results and basically said, "How are you even standing?" It was a chemical receipt for a decade of running on empty, which explained why life felt like swimming through peanut butter with no shore in sight.

When I finally slowed down, I realized how disconnected I'd become from myself. From my body, my emotions, and any vision of life that didn't revolve around the next deadline. I had become a very efficient productivity machine that occasionally needed coffee and conference calls.

An Imperfect Sabbatical (Because I'm an Imperfect Human)

I'll be honest: I had no idea what I was doing. I overplanned some parts, completely winged others, and learned most of it by trial and error (heavy on the error).

I traveled to Scottsdale, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Sedona, Maui, Joshua Tree. Places that practically forced me to slow down. But the real work happened in the quiet moments: therapy sessions where I ugly-cried, yoga classes where I discovered muscles I'd been ignoring, and long walks where I wasn't optimizing anything at all.

Slowly, I started to untangle who I was from what I produced.

But here's what nobody tells you about taking a break: the guilt is real.

Even lying on a beautiful beach, doing exactly what my depleted body needed, a voice in my head kept whispering: Is this just laziness? What about your résumé gap? Shouldn't you be learning a new skill or networking or literally anything productive right now?

That's when it hit me. Hustle culture had set up camp in my brain and refused to pay rent.

Rest was about dismantling the deeply embedded belief that my worth as a human was determined by my output as a worker. (Turns out those are not the same thing. Who knew?)

It took time to sit with those uncomfortable questions and ask better ones:

What if my value isn't defined by how much I produce?

What if having space to think and breathe is actually what creates clarity and strength?

What if coming back renewed is more powerful than never stopping at all?

What I Actually Learned

In Scottsdale, I learned that sometimes falling apart is the only way healing can begin. That real rest looks like system shutdown, not a spa day.

In Nicaragua, I remembered how to breathe. How to notice when I was shrinking myself to make others comfortable. How a sloth and a stubborn horse could teach me about unapologetic rest.

In Costa Rica, I learned to laugh at the gap between my Pinterest expectations and reality. That sometimes your body knows what you need better than your plans do.

In Sedona, I started trusting myself again. Making small decisions based on what felt right rather than what looked right. Extending my stay because my body said "not yet."

In Maui, I gave myself permission to want things again. To seek joy instead of just avoiding pain. To imagine work that didn't require sacrificing myself.

In Joshua Tree, it all came together. I found clarity about what I wanted to build next. I was ready to go home and create something meaningful.

Why Solaris Global Pathways Exists

When I finally felt ready to re-enter the professional world, I was clear: about my boundaries, about what I wanted, and about what I would never sacrifice again.

And I realized: I can't be the only one feeling this way.

We live in a culture where burnout has somehow become a status symbol, proof you're ambitious, proof you're committed. But real courage? That's asking whether your current path actually aligns with your values, or if you're just really good at ignoring the warning signs.

Taking a sabbatical challenged everything I'd been taught about career success. But staying on that hamster wheel, slowly eroding myself piece by piece, would have been far riskier.

That's why I created Solaris Global Pathways. Stepping away shouldn't require a crisis or a corporate restructuring. Renewal shouldn't be something you only get to experience after you've completely fallen apart.

A New Way Forward

Your energy matters. Your well-being matters. And if you've been pushing so hard for so long that you can't remember what it feels like to be connected to yourself and your purpose, maybe it's time to pause and find out.

The world will keep spinning while you take care of yourself. And when you return to your career, aligned with what actually matters to you, you'll show up from a place of strength.

That's what Solaris Global Pathways is here for: to help you make that choice possible.

Because you deserve more than just making it through. You deserve to actually thrive.