> The second year was more complicated. I could feel myself drifting away from myself. The structure of work and the rewards of working on big projects were now fully missing, and I could feel this growing emptiness that needed to be filled.

If you don't mind sharing — why did you not choose to do a big project? I've always imagined that if I were lucky enough to have a sabbatical/retire early, it's not that I wouldn't work, it's that I'd choose to work on stuff that is really important, but undervalued by society (which is the reason I can't do it as a living right now): e.g. activism & lobbying or volunteer work in the community.

I’ve asked myself the same question, because before taking the break I also had visions of working on important/meaningful/undervalued things on my own terms.

I think there were multiple factors. I hadn’t accounted for how much I relied on the work environment for social contact, and I didn’t have the social habits in place to maintain a healthy social life. This felt fine at first because I was also recovering from burnout, and solo road trips and adventures in the mountains felt great.

But every time I’d think about working on something, it felt insurmountable to my brain, and I just got stuck. I’d led huge projects in enterprise environments, but felt incapable of getting something going without some of the structure surrounding that.

I suppose it boils down to a skills issue. Had I realized I’d get so stuck, I may have prioritized a different set of activities. But one thing led to another and I was sliding down the depression slope at which point everything got exponentially more complicated.

I have to conclude that I could have done things differently and that could have led to a better outcome. But all of my professional success hadn’t prepared me for the personal habit changes I needed to implement to have a better outcome.