The Darkside of a Highly Successful Year Off

By most accounts, my Year Off was one hell of a success. I accomplished my goals of long-term travel and exploration. I learned new skills that always interested me and I tried many new activities, gaining new interests along the way. I avoided illness and injury and financial ruin. I came back to a good job, and I’m now married to a wonderful wife.

Life is damn good right now.

But I’m beginning to notice the dark side of a very successful Year Off.

It’s much more difficult to have a novel experience. My brain was constantly flooded with new and exciting experiences for a whole year. The memory of those experiences sustained me for quite some time. Then I had the amazing experiences of getting engaged and married and settling into the married life with my wife, Alanna. And now that we’re settled, I’m kind of back in the normal rat race. The good vibes of my Year Off have worn off.

I find myself looking forward and planning the next big trip too often. I have future financial goals that I want to reach as soon as possible so we can just set off on another big grand adventure. I’m not living in the moment as much as I was before.

A year of profound experiences and constantly changing, beautiful scenery and experiences creates an expectation in your brain and almost a craving for the new and novel experience. It’s like I need that dopamine rush you get from being in flow, being in the zone.

I was in the flow state that entire time. The entire Year Off was a flow state. I had flow experiences within flow experiences within flow experiences. This created some of the greatest feelings I could ever imagine, what I call the feelings of complete freedom. It’s similar to the high that people on drugs experience, only it’s a real high and not artificially created.

I’m having difficulty recreating those feelings. Days and weeks and months are beginning to look the same. I feel like my day-to-day life is all on repeat. I find it harder to get out of bed in the morning. It’s like I know that the feelings I had during my Year Off are not likely to be attained during the day and that makes it harder to get up.

I feel my mind straining for new experiences. I discover a new song and it gives me temporary relief but then I get tired of the song and I’m back at square one. I go for a jog in the park but it’s not as fulfilling as it used to be.

Serendipity is hard to come by. Nothing surprises me as much anymore.

Work has been a good source of flow but I feel my mind changing back to the worrisome way it was before my Year Off.

I need to find creative constructive ways to get myself into flow on a daily basis. I need to work with my wife to obtain that.

I know what I need to do to get out of my funk but it’s not easy. I need to focus more on the present moment. Stop worrying about future trips and plans and put more of my attention on what’s right in front of me.

I need to practice gratitude more often. Give thanks for what I have and make that known.

My relationships with friends and family need to be priority number one. It is through the active improvement of those relationships where I will find some of that missing novelty of life. I need to stop focusing so much energy on myself and start focusing that energy on improving the lives of other people.

This blog is a great way to do that. To perhaps help other people obtain major life goals and re-prioritize their lives and help shift their focus from the rat race and pursuit of wealth and fame and glory towards the pursuit of more meaningful goals and relationships. I need to talk to other people who have gone through with a Year Off and hear their stories. Learn from them.

But most importantly, I need to practice gratitude.