Rehab phase 1 is almost complete; Phase 2 is coming

Posted on September 9, 2010 by ryan

Today is our last day in Chile. Tomorrow we return to Argentina. Next week we return to the US.

Phase 1 of rehab has been intense

We have been unemployed and in South America for almost exactly 6 months now.

For 6 months we have had no deadlines and no responsibilities.

We’ve had neither cellphone nor blackberry and we’ve tried to exclusively spend our time doing things that we want to do rather than things that we were supposed to do. For instance, look how long it’s been since I last got a haircut:

Luckily, I'm getting a haircut later this week

We’ve slept for as many hours as we chose to every night (except for the damn 4am geyser tour in Atacama).

Stupid geysers. Stupid 4am. Stupid, stupid.

We’ve taken lots of daytime naps, we’ve enjoyed bottles of wine for lunch and we’ve consumed more steak then we had eaten in the previous 10 years combined.

Dinner in Buenos Aires: Perfectly cooked Argentine beef image

And we'd do it again

At times, we’ve seen amazing landscapes. At times, we’ve sat on park benches and watched dogs play for hours. At times, we’ve sat on benches and had people try to steal Jen’s purse – that was entertaining.

We’ve read lots of books. We’ve tried to read many Spanish newspapers. This has gone poorly.

We’ve lived in 2 countries and immersed ourselves in their cultures- Argentina for 4.5 months and Chile for 1.5 months. We are happy to help you plan your trips.

We’ve sat in cafes for hours – in the beginning we had lots to talk about… later we just stared at each other… then we started bringing books… then we ran out of books… Now we don’t go to cafes so much.

Each of these things has been a critical part of our rehabilitation. By completely removing ourselves from our old environment and the associated pressures/peers/challenges, we were forced to gain perspective. We were humbled on a daily basis. It was annoying.

Through immersing ourselves in foreign cultures in which nothing is expected of us and no one cares about our resumes or has a vested interest in what we do next, we found perspective on who we had been and on who we want to be. At times it was freeing, at times it was frustrating – both are part of the process.

Through meeting people on the road (both travelers and locals) our perspective on what life can look like and the sheer number of different possibilities that exist and can lead to happiness has expanded immensely. As has our definition of happiness-now we think it requires frequent napping.

Finding this perspective was the goal of rehab phase 1. This isn’t the end. We don’t have any answers, but this new and broader perspective will serve as the foundation for phase 2.

Rehab phase 2: Re-entry / where we go from here

Next week we will fly back to the US and begin phase 2. We are not sad to return, we are excited to start a new chapter of this adventure. It’s like a choose your own adventure book, except written for adults instead of 8 year olds.

To say that we are ‘returning’ is not entirely accurate… we don’t have a specific home to return to. We have a storage unit full of stuff in San Francisco and a car in Seattle. We have no jobs and no place to live that is our own. And, due to poor/rushed planning all of our other clothes are in that storage unit, so we will have to continue wearing the same 5 outfits that we have been wearing for the last 6 months even though all of our sweaters and socks have holes in them. This should make a strong impression in job interviews.

We won’t be picking up where we left off, we will be starting fresh in a new city. We are planning to live in Seattle for a variety of reasons. It will likely rain a lot, but also be much cheaper.

The prospect of starting fresh is a little intimidating at times, but with our newly broadened perspective, we are excited to construct lives that offer us balance. We don’t know what it will look like exactly. From a distance, it might look like a dancing penguin. No one knows. That’s what makes it exciting.

Let's hope that it doesn't look like this dancing penguin

Jen is looking for a ‘real’ job. I plan to pursue a number of entrepreneurial projects that I have been toying with for some time. In both cases, we will only consider things that we think we will genuinely enjoy. We have already accumulated plenty of option value in our careers and are ready to cash in and find things we love. The evil mongeese can suck it.

We’d like to have a dog. And we’d like to have lives that allow us to keep the dog alive. We suspect that the dog will appreciate this as well.

We plan to have hobbies outside of work. We’ve heard that this is possible. Jen would like to teach English as a foreign language in the evenings. I’m excited to return to improv comedy. Maybe we’ll even do something athletic–fear not, we pledge to continue drinking enough wine to keep ourselves firmly out of shape.

We believe that we are ready for phase 2, but re-entry comes with a number of risks. We need to be ever-vigilant for any signs of relapse.

Signs that we might be relapsing:

If any of the following occur, we may need to buy plane tickets or at least some steak…

We don’t actively pursue hobbies
We eat take-out dinners more than twice a week
We have more than 3 days in a row of unhappiness at work (a couple of days can happen anywhere from time to time – at 3, we torch the place)
More than 50% of the friends that we spend time with on a regular basis have MBAs
We spend more than 10% of our social interactions complaining about our jobs
We eat lunch while still typing
The idea of getting a dog dies due to impracticalities of work schedule
The dog itself dies due to neglect
Multiple instances of cancelling social events occurs due to last-minute work conflicts
We check emails on our phone while mid-conversation with others
We don’t manage to leave the country at least twice a year
We achieve Starwood platinum status (and are proud of it)

There are almost certainly others. We will need your help to avoid relapsing. That is why we absolutely plan to continue this blog. It will become less about South America (though there are still tons of topics we’ve been meaning to write about on Chile/Argentina and still plan to), and more about Seattle and our re-entry.

We hope to be an example not just of a couple that left our jobs to travel for 6 months, but one that also made a successful return to our careers and are better off than we were before we left.

Stay tuned.

Any other relapse warning signs you can think of that we should watch out for??

Trip report: San Pedro de Atacama (part 2)

Posted on September 7, 2010 by jen

Our vacation from a vacation from a vacation in San Pedro continues – here’s what we did days 3 and 4, as well as our thoughts on a few restaurants and hotels in San Pedro. (P.S. Day 4 includes the most incredible natural landscape we’ve ever seen . . . and we get around.) If you missed it, you can read Part 1 of our trip review here.

TOURS/EXCURSIONS

Day 3: Lagunas Cejar and Tebenquiche

Tour company: Layana

Price: CLP10,000/person (~US$20)

Time: Afternoon trip leaving San Pedro at 3pm (~4 hours)

What we did: The big attraction for this tour is going out to Laguna Cejar, where the water is so salty that you float. A lot. This sounded cool, so we signed up. What we didn’t hear before we went was that the water is cold. Really, really cold. We had been looking forward to relaxing in the water, given that it was a hot, sunny day, but all that changed when our toes touched the laguna. Ryan ended up getting in (briefly) and verified that you do, in fact, float more than in regular water.

Ryan's the crazy one who floated in the freezing cold water

Then, we hopped back in our tour bus and headed nearby to Laguna Tebenquiche for sunset. This place is really cool because you can get some incredible reflections of the volcanoes in the laguna – Ryan really liked this and took a lot of pictures.

Us at Laguna Tebenquiche

A nice touch by the tour company was that they brought along snacks and pisco sours – yum! Some of our tour-mates skipped the sunset photo op and instead focused on taking pictures of themselves in various poses with the pisco sour bottle . . .

Verdict: This was a chill, relaxing afternoon activity – nothing spectacular (actually, the sunset was pretty incredible) but it was something fun to do close to town that didn’t mean being on a bus all day long. One strange thing with this tour was that the guide didn’t speak English at all during the tour. Not that he couldn’t speak English (he busted out some English with us later) but just that he didn’t bother asking if anyone on the tour wanted English. With other tours we were on, the guides always said everything in both English and Spanish. We didn’t say anything because we’d already heard enough about the volcanoes and lagoons on the other tours, but seemed strange to us that this was the approach.

See the rest of our pics from this trip here: Lagunas Cejar and Tebenquiche.

Day 4: Lagunas Altiplanicas

Tour company: Cosmo Andino

Price: CLP35,000/person (~US$70)

Time: Full day trip leaving San Pedro at 7am (~11 hours)

What we did: This was a day that involved a lot of sitting in the van, as many of the places we visited were really far away. We started at the Laguna Chaxa, which is in the middle of a massive salt flat – actually the 3rd largest in the world (after Bolivia and apparently Utah – who knew?). This was different than the salt flat we visited near Salta, Argentina, in that it’s an incredibly rugged landscape that looks more like rocks than the smooth white field we saw in Argentina.

Yep, that crinkly, rocky looking stuff is salt

The big attraction here for most people is the flamingos that hang out in the lagoon. They were cool, but really, really far away – see?

Those are flamingos

Luckily, we have a really good zoom on our camera.

They look just like the yard decorations in Florida!

We’d been to the (very good) zoo in Santiago the week before and seen flamingos from about 5 feet away, so we were less impressed than others in our group.

After breakfast at the first stop, we hopped in the van for a ~2 hour ride to 2 big lagoons at really high altitude. They were kind of pretty but (in my opinion) not worth the hours in the car. And, this was essentially just a photo stop – when we got there, we walked along a set path, then got back in the van. Not exactly adventure travel.

Please do not stray from the path

The stop that made this trip worthwhile, though, was at the Salar de Talar (Talar salt flat). Apparently Cosmo Andino is the only tour company that goes there – we arrived and were the only sign of civilization anywhere around. And this place was pretty incredible – the most spectacular thing we saw on the entire trip.

It really looked like that - like somebody airbrushed an entire mountain

The colors that existed here were absolutely amazing.

Seriously, you should check out our album - this place was incredible

We hopped out of the van and walked for a good 40 minutes along the edge of the lagoon – it was cold and windy but worth it because the view was so amazing. Check out our panoramic video and listen to the wind:

After the lagoons, we stopped in 2 small towns to walk around a bit. The second one, Toconao, was really charming – enjoying sodas in the main square before heading back to San Pedro was a great end to the day.

Such a cute town square!

Verdict: This tour was worth it for the special stop at Salar de Talar – this was one of the most spectacular things we’ve ever seen in nature. After seeing it, we don’t understand why this isn’t the main attraction on the tour and the other tour companies don’t even go there at all. Cosmo Andino was a little more expensive than other tour companies but totally worth it. Also, our guide was great – Oscar was born of Chilean parents in London so speaks perfect English and Spanish . . . although we weren’t expecting the Cockney accent from a big Chilean dude, so took us a minute to adjust. He was great and made the tour really relaxed and fun.

See the rest of the pics from our trip here: Lagunas Altiplanicas.

RESTAURANTS

La Estaka

This place is AH-MAZ-ING. Better than pretty much anywhere we’ve eaten in Santiago. It’s 2 long rooms (indoors, which is important during cold desert nights – some of the other places are outside), both with fireplaces that give it a cozy atmosphere.

Cozy inside La Estaka when it's freezing outside

They usually play lounge music, and one night we were treated to an (actually very good) quartet playing traditional local music. The food here is really, really good – over the 4 out of 5 nights of our trip that we ate here, we tried both salmons on the menu (one served with an incredible, cheesy quinoa risotto), the chicken curry and the steak. There were some mix-ups in the service – on two separate nights, we tried to order the salmon with risotto and instead were served the other salmon. Not quite sure how or why this happened, but the serving staff handled it really well and recovered nicely, comping us drinks to make up for it (we like drinks). Aside than this, the service was fabulous – very attentive, very friendly and generally made us feel welcome. By our last night there, the manager knew us, knew how we liked our salmon cooked and knew we’d want extra pebre with our bread (it’s so good!!!). This place is on the more expensive end for San Pedro (mains CLP8,900/US$17), but well worth it in our opinion.

We LOVE this place!!

Adobe

We think this place is owned by the same company as our beloved La Estaka. They’re known for the fire pit they have in the middle of the dining area where people hang out at the end of their long day tours. We had lunch here but avoided it for dinner – the fire pit is awesome, but it’s outside, and we were cold enough when we sat INSIDE!! We had a salad and a pizza here, and both were good but not out of this world.

Blanco

What an embarrassment of a restaurant. This is a swanky-looking place in all white right on the main drag. It’s trying really hard to be sleek and modern, but just not getting it done. We’re fine with basic food when we’re traveling, especially when we’re in the middle of a desert. We just don’t like when a place pretends to be high end, charges really high prices, serves bad food and has a wait staff with an attitude. Our waiter here was probably the worst we’ve ever had. He completely forgot about our drinks and looked perturbed when we asked about them 15 minutes later, took our order wrong and then argued with us when we asked him to correct it when our food was delivered. The chicken was raw in the middle and, when it came back from the kitchen the second time, was overdone and crunchy. We came really close to walking out but ended up staying because we had a just-opened bottle of wine on the table. It was this experience that sent us back to La Estaka for the remainder of our trip.

Tierra Todo Natural

We stopped in to this cool little open-air cafe for coffee (real espresso, not Nescafe) one afternoon and again for lunch another day. The espresso was good, the sandwich I had for lunch was fresh but a little bland and the tacos Ryan had were really good. We were a little confused by the taco menu at first (they have one that’s a “guacamole taco” which consists of just a tortilla and guac . . . hmmm), but the meat tacos were really tasty, especially with cheese added. Service is a little slow but friendly – we’d go back.

WHERE WE STAYED

San Pedro has a handful of really high-end places to stay (think US$300-600/night) and a bunch of simple hotels and hostals; we opted for the latter. We made a reservation in advance to stay at the Takha Takha and then moved to the Hostal Katarpe after our first night.

Takha Takha Hotel

This is located right at the end of the main road running through town. We arrived late at night and we happy that they had our reservation. It was freezing, so we decided to upgrade to a room with heat, which cost CLP47,000 (~US$95). The room was pretty, done in adobe. But we were less-than-thrilled with the king bed (actually, 2 twins pushed together with a giant bump in the middle; could feel the individual springs when we laid down; one half of the bed (mine, lucky me) had a plastic potty guard mattress pad that crinkled any time we moved) and the bathroom that had 2 thin-as-paper closet doors. The next morning, we saw that the compound was under construction and had building materials strewn everywhere – not that pretty.

The construction area was right outside our room

Also, no wifi – not a necessity, but nice to have. For what we were getting, we thought the place was significantly overpriced, so we found another place the next morning and moved.

Hostal Katarpe

We found this place after wandering in to ~10 different hotels/hostals near the main street.

See - isn't it cute?

At most of the places we checked, prices were pretty consistent, but this place was a great value! Our room was set near the back of the property (quiet!!), was very simple and clean and HAD HEAT and wifi!!! All this for CLP30,000/night (~US$60); note – we opted for the no-breakfast option for CLP5,000 less since so many of the tours leave first thing in the morning and include breakfast. The place also has a central patio that was great for relaxing and taking in a bit of late-afternoon sun. The woman who runs the place is very friendly and helpful, and we really enjoyed staying here!

Ryan chilling at the patio after the crazy geyser tour

OVERALL

This was a great trip, and we’re so glad we were able to fit it in while we’re here. It was really relaxing (other than the 4am geyser trip) and as different from Santiago as is possible. We got a ton of amazing pictures (see them here), at least a few of them will end up framed on the wall (someday, when we have a wall to call our own again). Yay travel!

Trip report: San Pedro de Atacama (part 1)

Posted on September 6, 2010 by jen

We decided to take a trip to get out of the Santiago smog for a few days and quickly decided on San Pedro because (1) it’s the only major attraction that’s to the north, and it’s still too cold to go south and (2) it’s really neat. San Pedro is a small town in the middle of the Atacama desert in northern Chile, the driest desert in the world. We learned while we were there that there are actually places in the desert where rain has never, ever fallen. Whoa.

The desert is beautiful shades of pink and orange that go on forever with some really funky rock formations, lagoons, lots of volcanoes and a giant sand dune we got to run down (without having to walk up it first – key benefit to the tour we took; see below). This was such a great, chill getaway from Santiago (our vacation from vacation from vacation), and we’re really glad we went. We went for 5 days and had an awesome time, and here’s what we did that made it awesome. This post covers our first two days there – details on our last 2 days coming soon! (Note: Lots and lots of travel details below for those of you planning trips to San Pedro; for the rest of you, focus on the pictures.)

TOURS/EXCURSIONS

There are a ton of tour companies lining the streets of San Pedro, pretty much all of them offering trips to the same attractions. We’d done some research beforehand and heard horror stories about a few of them (e.g., they’d cancel your trip then not give you your money back and just wait until your flight or bus left and there was nothing you could do about it) and noted a few that had consistently good reviews on Tripadvisor. Our first morning there, we went around and talked to a few of them and booked our excursions for the next few days – some have discounts if you book multiple tours with them or pay in cash (but you have to ask; they’re not just going to offer it up). Here’s what we decided to do:

Day 1: Valle de la Muerte and Valle de la Luna

Tour company: Cactus

Price: CLP10,000/person (~US$20)

Time: Afternoon trip leaving San Pedro at 3pm (~4 hours)

What we did: We did this tour our first afternoon in San Pedro. It’s the closest to town and seems to be the most common tour – pretty much everybody does this one. We received a recommendation to go with Cactus Tours because they’re a bit more active than the others, and we really liked this. Our guide (Pablo) was really cool, made the trip fun and relaxed. We first drove out to Valle de la Muerte and walked for ~40 minutes across the desert.

Pretty crazy landscape!

We ended up at the top of this massive sand dune where people were sandboarding. We then had a lot of fun running down it.

Those people had to walk up first - ha ha HA!!!

And the landscapes were amazing. Besides the really cool sand dune, there were also these crazy pointy rocks – how did they get that way????

Crazy landscape (along with the obligatory volcano)

Then we headed over to Valle de la Luna (so named because the landscapes are so strange it feels like you’re on the moon) and saw another really big sand dune, along with the Three Marias, which are 3 natural rock columns that somebody thought looked like Maria. Except that now there are only 2 – some tourist knocked one of them over. We ended the afternoon watching sunset over the valley.

Sunset in the desert is beautiful

Verdict: This was one of our favorite trips, for the combination of actually getting out and doing some walking (many trips involve sitting on a bus for hours and then getting out and taking pictures of things, then getting back on the bus), the great guide that we had and the beautiful sunset. Not to mention that it didn’t involve getting up before the sun was up (you’ll see what I mean in a minute).

See the rest of our pics from this trip here: Valle de la Luna photos.

Day 2: Geysers de Tatio and hot springs

Tour company: Cosmo Andino

Price: CLP25,000/person (~US$50)

Time: Brutally early morning trip leaving San Pedro at 4am (~8 hours)

What we did: This is a really popular tour in San Pedro, and most people would say it’s a can’t-miss, so we signed up and did it our second day in town. First, we set our alarm for 3:45am and waited outside our hostal for the bus in the dark at 4am. The drive up to the geysers takes about 1.5 hours, and we arrived while it was still dark. The geysers are at 13,700 feet, so it’s REALLY cold up there. We were bundled up in all the clothes we had (and some more we’d borrowed from friends in Santiago) and were still freezing. And not just the “I’m uncomfortable” type of freezing; this was more of the “I can’t feel my hands and am somewhat concerned my toes may need to be amputated” type of freezing. I grew up in Alaska and I’ve never been this cold.

Once we arrived, we had a cold breakfast and Nescafe outside the van as the pitch black was turning to morning dusk.

Breakfast in the dark and freezing cold

Our guide then took us around and told us a bit about the geysers and then gave us some time to walk around on our own. The geysers were kind of cool – lots of steam coming up from the ground, and one or two that would occasionally blow water up into the air. But we couldn’t really figure out why we had to be there so early in the morning. The explanation we got was that you couldn’t see the steam as well as it warmed up. But to us, it seemed like the geysers looked just as cool (and maybe better) when we left around 8am (after the sun had finally come up).

That's a fake smile (if you couldn't tell) - I was just pretending to have fun

We then drove out to a hot springs. Cosmo Andino goes to a different hot springs than most of the other tours, so we were the only ones there. It was basically a stream at the bottom of a hill filled with really warm water (actually boiling in some places – we didn’t go in to those places). It was nice, but it was still very cold, so the idea of stripping down to our skivvies was less-than-enticing for us and we ended up only dipping our feet in.

Pretty neat, but too cold to strip down

On our way back to San Pedro, we stopped seemingly in the middle of nowhere, where our guide (Oscar) showed us a bunch of endangered cacti (including one that was ~200 years old!) and then led us to a hidden waterfall around the side of a hill. It had finally warmed up, so we were able to enjoy the waterfall and a little bit of sunshine along with the waterfall.

It turned out that hugging the cactus was a bad idea

Verdict: For me, this tour was not worth getting up at 4 in the morning and nearly freezing to death for; if we had it to do again, I would skip it (or at the very least hire a private guide who would take us a few hours later). The geysers were ok, but we just can’t see why the 4am start is necessary. And I was so uncomfortably cold for at least the first 4 hours of the tour that for me it wasn’t worth the pain.

See the rest of our pics from this trip here: Geysers de Tatio.

Day 2: Astronomy adventure

Tour company: Space Star Tours

Price: CLP15,000/person (~US$30)

Time: Evening trip leaving San Pedro at 8pm (~2.5 hours)

What we did: While we were there, we learned that the Atacama desert is one of the best places for astronomy in the world, due to the high altitude and 350+ clear days per year. What’s going to be the largest observatory in the world (ALMA) is actually being built not far from San Pedro. A group of astronomers have set up an outdoor observatory where they basically give a tour of the night sky. We were picked up in town around 8pm and driven to the observatory, around 15 minutes away. We started in a round room lit by a single candle with a glass ceiling so you could see the stars. Our host for the evening, a Canadian astronomer (I think named Les) who lives in San Pedro, was incredible. He started by giving us a basic introduction to astronomy (really interesting, not dry at all), where we learned for one thing that Pluto is no longer considered a planet – who knew?

Then we went outside, near the 10 massive telescopes they have set up essentially in the front yard. Les had the coolest laser pointer we’ve ever seen – crazy green and looked like it was actually reaching all the way to the stars. He used this to point out the Southern Cross, Milky Way, Venus (we saw planets!!), Mars (more planets!) and even Jupiter which could all easily be seen with the naked eye, all the while explaining really fascinating historical discoveries. He then introduced us to what was on each of the telescopes, and then we had time to walk around and look in each of them. We saw 4 of Jupiter’s moons!!! And we saw a star formation that looks like a butterfly. And lots of other cool things. We ended the evening by heading back into the candlelit room for hot chocolate and Q&A with Les. He was really fascinating to talk to, had very thoughtful and detailed answers for all the questions but also had a skill for making it easy to understand.

Sadly our camera does not have a long enough exposure time to take good pictures of the stars... they were spectacular

Verdict: This was definitely our favorite “tour” of the trip. It’s definitely different from the other tours that are offered, and it’s like nothing we’ve ever done. I hadn’t expected seeing the stars and planets to be so interesting, but this was really a fabulous experience!!! Our camera is not good at night, so check out the Space Star Tours website for cool photos and more info – this is a must-do trip if you are in the area.

To be continued . . .

See how much fun we had in San Pedro? Be sure to check back for Part 2 tomorrow – including the coolest landscape we’ve ever seen!!

Update: Part 2 is posted: Trip Report: San Pedro de Atacama (part 2)

Addendum to our FAQ: Thoughts on management consulting

Posted on September 1, 2010 by ryan

It’s hard to believe that it’s September. We’ve now been in South America for almost 6 months and have written ~100 blog posts. What an amazing adventure it has been.

We have just returned from an incredible 5 days in the driest desert in the entire world (Atacama desert–stay tuned for our trip report and photos later this week!). You may be surpised and saddened to hear this, but this post is going to be even drier than that desert. There’s still time to stop reading.

We recently were reflecting on what our blog has become (far more than we ever anticipated!) and realized that given its title, there is some possibility that its purpose could be misinterpreted. We would certainly not want anyone to be offended by it or think from a cursory glance that it is focused on bashing our former employers and/or the management consulting industry. So, while we are likely just being overly paranoid, we figured we’d take a few minutes and clarify a few things about how this blog relates/does-not-relate to consulting.

The below Q&A will be added to our FAQ page shortly, but we wanted to post it here as well to make sure it got some exposure. Apologies that this is a bit dry; we promise to go back to writing about crazy travel experiences, interviews with cool people and ridiculous editing of mongoose photos right-away.

Addendum to FAQ:

Q: Is the purpose of this website to bash/criticize/make fun of the management consulting industry?

A: Absolutely not. While we do make light of our previous lifestyle as consultants using broad generalities and stereotypes in the “Our Consulting Problem” post, that is far from the focus of this blog. If you look at the ~100 posts of content on this blog, you’d see it’s roughly:

~70% Argentina travel experiences
~10% Chile travel experiences
~15% Career Break oriented stuff (e.g., our reflections, interviews of other people with interesting experiences, inspiration to do one, etc.)
2 posts of my comedic management book chapters (and strangely edited pictures of evil mongeese)
1 post that discusses our experience as consultants (Our Consulting Problem)

Feel free to check the Site Map to verify (note, there is some overlap in categories, so the numbers don’t work out perfectly).

Q: Doesn’t the name “Consulting Rehab” imply that you dislike the consulting industry and/or your experiences within it?

A: No. The name was chosen primarily for entertainment value (and we were, indeed, entertained when the ads served by Google for the first few weeks were for drug rehab centers in Northern California!). While there are many ups and downs, I think everyone would agree that, on average, management consulting is more intense from a lifestyle perspective than most jobs and that anyone working hard could use a break for a little ‘rehab’ from time to time. We chose the title for the following reasons:

It was somewhat unique that we were both consultants
Most of our friends that we thought would be reading the blog were also consultants (Note: At this point the majority of our readers are people planning trips to Argentina/Chile or just looking for travel inspiration, given our content mix)
“Consulting Rehab” just seemed more entertaining than “Consulting Break” or anything else we could come up with, and our assumption was that pretty much everyone in the consulting industry is capable of laughing at themselves a bit (as this was one of the reasons we had so much fun there)
The domain name was available

Q. So, what do you think about the consulting industry?

A. We think that management consulting is an incredible industry to develop business skills, learn how different industries work and rapidly accumulate expertise across a number of dimensions. It’s hard to imagine another job in which you work with so many dynamic people (both clients and co-workers), learn new things every day and help to solve some of the most complex and high-impact business problems out there. These are just some of the tremendous benefits to management consulting, and we genuinely value the time that we spent in the industry.

There are challenges as well. Like any professional services industry, consultants often have more intense hours, spend more nights in hotels and can be required to be ‘always-on’ and ready to respond quickly to clients or other team members at any time. The degree of intensity varies greatly from project to project – ranging from low-key/relaxed/fun to super intense/stressful – and it can be difficult to predict what it will be like from project to project or even day to day. At times, this unpredictability makes the job exciting, dynamic and awesome. At times it just makes it hard to plan anything else in your life outside of work. None of this should be a surprise to anyone; this is just how professional services goes.

No jobs are perfect. Jobs are jobs. I’d personally much rather be too busy and stressed on an intense consulting project in which I am learning a lot and working with a highly talented team than bored in a monotonous corporate job where I get to go home early (I did that for awhile too). That’s my strong preference and what drew me to consulting to begin with. Probably the best project I ever worked on had me in a conference room with a 12 person team working for ~15 hours a day for 3 weeks–I didn’t get much sleep, but I’ve never learned so much in such a short period of time, and because the team was so great, it was also a tremendous amount of fun. (To be clear, those kinds of hours are not the norm, but they do happen from time to time.)

I’m rambling, so I’ll end with this: Management consulting is an awesome career with tremendous benefits. Along with those benefits come some costs to your life outside of work. Like any job, each person has to do their own ROI calculation on an ongoing basis to ensure that they are getting enough out of the job to justify what they are putting into it and that it can co-exist with whatever other priorities they may have in their life. Some people manage the costs better than others, and some firms care about this more than others (we believe that our former firm genuinely cared a lot about this and did a great deal to make the job as manageable as possible). There are definitely other jobs that require even more lifestyle sacrifices, but also many that require less (though may also offer fewer benefits). It just depends on what you are optimizing for (which can/does/should change over time).

I would not think that any of what I have said above would be controversial.

Q: Have you ever written about specific things/people at your old firm or client experiences?

A: Absolutely not and we have no intention to do so. As stated above, we mostly write about travel experiences/inspiration and, more recently, career breaks and unconventional career/lifestyle design.

Q: You have mentioned in various posts that you are hoping to inspire people to take Career Breaks and travel… are you trying to get consultants to quit their jobs?

A: Three things on this:

Thing 1: No, we’re not
This is not about consultants (or consulting) but rather addresses the broader, more diverse audience of our current and future readers who, regardless of what job they work in, are interested in learning more about Career Breaks or at least living vicariously through those of others.
Thing 2: We think pretty much anyone can benefit from taking a break
We have had an amazing experience on this trip and have no doubt that when we return to our careers, we will be refreshed and recharged, have new perspectives from living in foreign cultures, have new language skills and overall be more effective in whatever jobs we land in.

If there is anyone out there (in any job) that is sitting around wishing they could do something like this, then yes, it is absolutely our intention to help inspire them to pursue whatever they are passionate about and to realize that there are many success stories out there and different paths available.

This doesn’t necessarily require anyone to quit their job or jeopardize their career–there are many options (e.g., long vacation, sabbatical, part-time, etc.). Our previous firm had a program that allowed people to take 2-month sabbaticals, because they realized that people are more effective when they aren’t burnt out and that there is a lot of value to having time to recharge every once in awhile. Same sort of idea. Sometimes all you need is a break and then you can return to your previous job re-inspired with a new sense of purpose; sometimes a break highlights that you would be happier pursuing a different career. It just depends on you and your situation. Either way, I think taking a break is a very healthy thing to do from time to time.

Our thought is that time goes by quickly and you never get it back–if you don’t go after your passions now, it will only get harder to do so later.
Thing 3: We’re contemplating changing our name to make this more clear
We recently purchased the domain names http://www.CubicleRehab.com and http://www.MBARehab.com and are considering switching to one of those as our primary domain to clarify that this is an industry-independent message geared towards anyone in any job that could use some inspiration/advice on how to take a break. We’re still unsure whether or not to make the change as there are some unpleasant technical implications, and some of our readers prefer the current name. Always open to more perspectives on this – let us know what you think.

Q: What if I’m still angry that you are joking around about consulting?

A: Sorry. We genuinely didn’t intend to offend anyone. Part of why we were both drawn to our former firm was how dynamic the people there are and how, despite being some of the most intelligent and talented people we’d ever met, they rarely took themselves too seriously and were always up for a good laugh (e.g., hilarious offsite videos). Our thought was that the very little we have written in regard to the industry would be perceived as entertaining and relateable, rather than as some sort of attack.

To conclude…

Hopefully this has helped to clarify any potential confusion over our intentions and our perspective on consulting–because we know how much you all spend sitting around wondering what we think about consulting 🙂 Thanks to all of you who read this blog for your comments, Facebook “likes” and general support. We never thought it would be more than a way to keep in touch with a handful of friends and family, but we’ve had a tremendous amount of fun maintaining it, especially as its readership has grown. Thank you for your time – we will now go back to entertaining you.

Atacama: A Vacation within a vacation within a vacation

Posted on August 27, 2010 by ryan

First…

we packed up our apartment in San Francisco, put most of our stuff in storage and went to Buenos Aires.

Then…

after ~4 months we left a couple of bags with a friend in Buenos Aires and went to Santiago.

Then…

after ~1 month we left a couple of bags with friends in Santiago and headed up to San Pedro de Atacama. We’ll be here for ~5 days.

Like a dream within a dream within a dream…

this is a vacation within a vacation within a vacation. We can only hope that the ‘kicks’ are timed correctly and we will be able to return to Santiago and then Buenos Aires and then the US with all of our things and ourselves intact. If anything goes wrong we could become lost in vacation limbo forever. Obviously, this would be horrible.

We have to be careful.

We can only hope that our subconscious doesn’t create evil projections that are able to catch us and throw us out of our vacation early. To avoid them we will have to choose a new and exotic destination every day. We will go to crazy places like the Valle de la Luna, Los Geysers del Tatio, Las Lagunas Altiplanicos and others. If things get desperate, we may even go so far as to go sandboarding in the desert and/or cross the somewhat unpredictable and recently unstable border into Bolivia. Hopefully these crazy environments and activities will be enough to confuse our subconscious and keep us safe.

Time moves much slower here than in reality.

Because we have total freedom to choose what we want to do in each moment, every day spent in a normal vacation is worth 10 days of life at home (just add up how many hours you spend enjoying what you want to do vs. doing what you are supposed to do in a normal 10 day period in reality and you’ll see what I mean). Many theorize that this time distortion compounds with each additional layer of vacation abstraction–each day on a second level vacation is worth 100 days of enjoyment in your normal life; each day on a third level, 1,000. We’ll be here for ~5 days on this third level vacation which means that for us it will be the equivalent of 5,000 days worth of normal life enjoyment. You will hardly realize that we were gone, but for us, we will have experienced ~14 years of enjoyment here in the arid high-altitude desert of Atacama. If, upon reading this, you are now depressed by how little you enjoy your normal life, consider joining us–there is still room on our afternoon tour.

Unfortunately we do not have any spinny tops.

When we return… if we return… we will have no way of knowing whether or not we are back in reality or are in yet another layer of vacation. It’s entirely possible that we will spend the rest of our lives unsure whether we are on vacation or not. We are okay with this. If we do end up in vacation limbo, please consider joining us, but under no circumstances should you attempt to rescue us.

By the way…

If the last 6 months have just been a dream and rather than traveling in South America we’ve actually just been sleeping in a conference room using our laptops as pillows while making slides for a big presentation tomorrow… Please don’t wake us up; we will be cranky.

p.s. If you haven’t seen the movie “Inception” go see it. Then this will make (at least some) sense.

CPTJMIY: Gordon Jack on getting the government to pay for your travel adventures

Posted on August 25, 2010 by ryan

Last week on Crazy People That Just Might Inspire You (CPTJMIY), we featured Crazy Person Dave Kovac on his involvement with Habitat for Humanity Global Village and how he manages to make his passion for travelling the world and helping people a regular part of his life. Hopefully, many of you were inspired (if not, let me know and I’ll tell Dave to try to be crazier in the future).

Dave’s success in setting his life up in a way that allows him to balance his passions with his commitments/responsibilities on an ongoing basis is pretty awesome. What’s perhaps even more awesome is that his is only one of thousands of ways to do this. If you spend most of your time in an office you likely don’t hear much about all of these less-conventional lifestyles that are out there–it’s not because they aren’t out there, it’s because the people that are living them are not spending much time hanging out in your office (also, conversely, the people that are in the office with you all the time are unlikely to be promoting unconventional lifestyles). That’s what CPTJMIY is here for.

Diversity is abundant when it comes to Crazy People. This week’s Crazy Person is Gordon Jack; he represents a whole different flavor of crazy.

Some background on Gordon

We met Gordon in Buenos Aires at an intercambio event at our Spanish school back in ~April. For those that aren’t familiar with the term ‘intercambio,’ in this context it’s meant to be a gathering of native Spanish speakers interested in learning English, with native English speakers interested in learning Spanish. You get together, drink some wine and talk half in English and half in Spanish. Perhaps the most notable part of our intercambio experience with Gordon was that there were no native Spanish speakers, so after making each others’ Spanish worse for awhile we just talked to Gordon in English. We’re glad we did.

It was an intercambio just like this one (photo courtesy of Gordon)

We immediately hit it off with Gordon. Not only is he just a very cool guy; at the time, he was also relatively new to BA and from San Francisco so we had a lot to talk about. Also, he’s a Crazy Person. Gordon somehow managed to get the US government to pay for a ~6 month trip to Buenos Aires for him and his family; sadly, we did not. Intrigued? Would you like to get the US government to pay for an incredible international adventure for you? We thought so. Let’s find out how this works.

Gordon Jack: The interview

Let’s start with some basics…

Gordon, give us some background… what is your career back home?

I am a high school English teacher.

Why do you do it and how long have you been doing it?

Most teachers would say they want to save the world by educating young people to be caring and responsible citizens. That’s kinda true for me. Initially, I took the job because I wanted extended vacations. After working in advertising for four years, I needed more than a two-weeks off a year.

Have you done any long-term travel like this in the past? If so, where/why?

I’ve never enjoyed vacations that involve a lot of traveling. What I like to do is repeat my routine in a foreign country. That way, I experience both normalcy and abnormality at the same time. It makes the craziness comfortable (or the comfort crazy, I haven’t decided which.)

As a sophomore in high school, I lived for a summer with a family in Oaxaca, Mexico. My sophomore year in college I studied abroad in Lugano, Switzerland for a semester. After quitting my advertising job, I lived in Granada, Spain for two years. I also worked for a year in Santiago, Chile at the international school there. Given all this time spent in Spanish speaking countries, it’s surprising my Spanish isn’t better than it is.

What do you like about international travel/living? What motivates you to do it?

I like the challenge of international living. Every day, you learn something new about the culture or language. Back home, I wouldn’t spend much time finding the right medicine for constipation. But in another country, that can be a whole day adventure!

Do you consider yourself to be a Crazy Person? Do your friends and family?

I don’t think so, but those funny green men in orange suits who live in my sock drawer disagree with me.

Ok, now about this Argentina thing…

How long were you and your family in Argentina?

5 months

Why Argentina?

I spent a long weekend in Buenos Aires when I was working in Santiago, Chile and fell in love with the city. I love the beauty of the architecture, the life on the streets, the plethora of parks and museums. There are also incredible things to see outside the city, like the glaciers, waterfalls, vineyards, lakes, cattle ranches, and dinosaur fossils (OK, my seven year old son made me include that last one.)

We heard that you got the government to pay for a big chunk of this trip… How is this possible? What did you have to do for them in return? (We’re hoping it involves secret spy stuff)

Well, I sort of spied on their academic institutions, but I didn’t learn any valuable state secrets. I went to Argentina on a Fulbright scholarship, which paid for most of the trip. Most people, including myself, think that Fulbright grants are reserved for fancy academics but they have some for slobs like me too. In return for the money, I had create a project that promoted cross-cultural communication between students in Argentina and the United States.

Tell us more about your project

My project involved having U.S. And Argentine students engage in a visual correspondence of photographs to see what could be learned about a different culture. Over the course of three months, the students exchanged photographs which in some way represented their values or beliefs. The challenge was to find a way to represent an abstract idea with a concrete image (they weren’t allowed to put themselves in the photo). Upon receiving the photo, the partner had to interpret the image and then send one back that matched it in some way (through a similar use of line, image, color, etc.) but communicated something unique about him or her. Here is a link with some examples: http://www.slideshare.net/gordonjack/visual-correspondence-project

So what were the results of your project?

The results were mixed. Not as many students participated as I would have liked, but the students who participated did amazing work that made me look good to the fancy academics.

Would you consider your experience worthwhile?

Definitely. It was an amazing experience for my family. We got to spend a lot more time together, which you might think would be disastrous, but it worked out surprisingly well.

Here's Gordon presenting a fancy looking chart. Brings back memories. (photo courtesy of Gordon)

Let’s talk Fulbright…

How did you get the idea to apply for a Fulbright scholarship?

I wish I could say it was through months of painstaking research and thoughtful deliberation, but the truth is, I saw an ad in an educational magazine announcing a new Fulbright grant called “The Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching” and decided to apply. When I asked my wife’s permission, she looked at me kind of funny. “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I thought for a second you said you wanted to apply for a Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching.”
“I did,” I replied.
“Distinguished? Really?”
“Why not?”
“Nothing. Go for it.”
Little did she realize what a misnomer the program’s title was.

Can just anyone apply (age/expertise/education/etc.)? How do you qualify?

You need some teaching experience. Here’s the website for anyone who’s interested: http://www.fulbrightteacherexchange.org/dteIndex.cfm

What kinds of projects can you do? Any good examples of other projects you are familiar with?

Like I said, the goal of the projects is to promote cross-cultural understanding and dialogue. My project involved a visual correspondence of self-portrait photographs between Argentine and U.S. students. Another Fulbrighter in Argentina was studying traditional folkloric music to teach to her students in the U.S.

What percent of your time were you focused on your project vs. enjoying your trip?

The nice part of about the scholarship was that it allowed for a more balanced time of work and play. The bureaucracy in Argentina is pretty bad. As a result, things move much slower there than in the U.S. The nice part about this was that while I was waiting for my mentor to find me classes to teach and attend, I could go on nice long lunches with my wife.

If you get a scholarship, what does the government provide?

Money and contacts. We had to find our apartment and our son’s school on our own.

J. William Fulbright paid for Gordon's trip, now he wants to pay for your trip

How does the application process work? How long does it take? How competitive is it?

I applied in March 2009, was accepted in May of that year and left in February 2010. I don’t know how many applications the Fulbright organization received. The program was new so I benefited from fewer people knowing about it.

Any advice for someone interested in applying?

Do it! It’s great. I was burning out and now I feel like I’m burning again (in a good way).

Any pros/cons to trying to get this kind of a scholarship to facilitate travel?

Well, there’s the whole work thing. That could be a pro or a con depending on your point of view. We could have traveled more if I didn’t have to work on my project. On the other hand, the project focused my time and made it feel more purposeful. I feel like I got more out of my experience because I had this particular focus that put me in touch with people I never would have met if I were just traveling.

Now, a little on balancing this with the rest of your life…

Did you have to quit your previous job in order to do this, or was your employer willing to let you go on sabbatical for awhile?

My employer reacted the same way as my wife when I told him I was applying for this grant. He had to sign a form guaranteeing my job when I returned, which I think he only did because he never thought I would get it.

Any advice for convincing an employer to let someone do something like this?

Play along with other people’s low expectations but don’t let them dissuade you. When you approach your superintendent with the form, say “This is something I’m never going to get, but would mind signing it anyway?” Then be sure to act all surprised when they accept you and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. You should also mention that it looks good for the district to have a Fulbright teacher on their staff, even though no one probably cares.

Was it challenging to convince your family to go along? How did that work out?

My wife was surprisingly game for the adventure and my seven-year-old son wasn’t told about it until we boarded the plane so he didn’t have time to complain.

Any general advice for people looking to find ways to make their passions part of their regular lives?

Well, first you have to find your passion, which can be hard because sometimes it’s buried deep beneath the thousands of emails filling your inbox. Taking time away from your responsibilities can help you discover what you like to do. As a teacher, I benefit from having three months a year to do this and it’s helped me understand what makes me happy and what makes me miserable. Now, I’m trying to focus as much of my time on the happy part and avoid as much as possible the miserable part, which is also hard because no one pays you to be happy. They only pay you to be miserable.

Gordon getting paid by the government to happily take a nap with an Argentine horse (photo courtesy of Gordon)

Thanks Gordon!!

You can read more about Gordon and his family’s adventures in Argentina on his very entertaining blog: http://jackfamilyinba.wordpress.com/

For those of you that aren’t teachers, fear not, you still may be able to hook yourself up with a Fulbright Grant. They have several programs for people of different backgrounds. Check out the official site for more details on what grants are out there and how to get more information: Official Fulbright website If you manage to get one of these, not only does the government pay for an incredible adventure, but it’s super prestigious and according to the Fulbright Wikipedia page, lots of Fulbrighters win Nobel Prizes–those look really good on your resume.

So, to recap:

Government pays for crazy travel adventure
You design your own research project having to do with things that interest you
You get a good balance between living/working in a foreign culture and an amazing long-term vacation
It’s highly prestigious and will very likely help to advance your career rather than looking like a long vacation
You might win a Nobel prize

Sounds like a pretty awesome way to take a career break to us. We wish our career break had at least one of these five elements (ideally either the government paying for it or the Nobel prize).

Check us out on Career Break Secrets!

Posted on August 25, 2010 by ryan

We got featured on the “Who’s out there now” segment of Career Break Secrets. You can check it out here: Consulting Rehab feature

If you aren’t familiar with Career Break Secrets, you should be. They are yet another great resource out there to provide planning resources and help inspire you to go on your own career break adventure. Also, they are one of the sponsors of Meet, Plan, Go! which we wrote about last week here.

Rather than trying to describe them myself, here is a quick excerpt on how Career Break Secrets describes themselves:

“A career break is a way to rejuvenate and reconnect with your passion, whether you want a month away from your daily grind, or a year to find what makes you happy. Career Break Secrets can make what seems like an overwhelming undertaking – easy. Our planning advice and video travel guides, created with the career breaker in mind, will inspire you and show you how. We help you make that dream to take a career break a reality today. Why? Because life is out there.”

Pretty cool. Check it out.

Wine tasting at Concha y Toro

Posted on August 22, 2010 by jen

Ryan and I had a day free of networking meetings this past week, so we decided to get out of the city and visit Concha y Toro winery for the afternoon. We were psyched to find out we could get almost all the way there using public transit: hop the subway one block from our apartment in Bellas Artes, make one change, ride it to the end, then a 10 minute cab ride out to the winery.

Even if it doesn’t ring a bell, you’re probably familiar with Concha y Toro – recognize any of these labels?

We've seen Casillero del Diablo in the grocery stores and Como Sur in Trader Joe's in CA

Concha y Toro is the largest winery in Latin America (and the 8th largest in the world) and exports ~80% of their wines – lots of them end up in the US. They also seem to be the biggest winery tour attraction (at least that we’ve ever seen). We learned from our guide that during the low season (like now, middle of winter), they give tours to ~300 visitors per day. In the high season (December/January), they have up to 900 guests per day. To us, it seemed crazy busy – can’t imagine what it’s like during high season.

We had called ahead and made reservations for the English tour. We arrived a bit early and wandered through the store, trying to avoid the group of 40 Venezuelans (who clearly were not at their first stop of the day). Our tour ended up being just us and 6 retired Australians, and it went a little something like this:

Watch cheezy corporate video about the history of the winery in a fancy theater room
Walk across the winery grounds to see the original house that the owner built – beautiful yellow and white mansion with lots of cool statues and fountains and a view over the vineyards and their own private pond
The house and the grounds surrounding it are gorgeous, even on a grey winter day
Look at some dormant vines (we’ve taken to visiting wineries in the dead of winter; not recommended) and wait for Australian tourmates to finish asking the guide question about her year mopping floors in an Australian mine
Taste a splash of something white in our fancy dancy branded glasses (that we got to take home!)
Wait for the group of 40 tipsy Venezuelans to leave the cellar (the Casillero del Diablo) so we can go down and check it out. The story goes that long ago, the original owner noticed that bottles of his private stash of wines had gone missing from the cellar, so he spread a rumor that the devil dwelled in his cellar . . . and never lost another bottle again. As we were leaving the cellar, the lights went out (it was really dark) and a recorded voice began telling the story of the devil in the cellar
Pop back above-ground and taste a splash of something red before being shuttled into the restaurant and store

While this wasn’t exactly the best wine tour we’ve been on, it was interesting to see Chile’s largest wine tourist attraction. And the free glasses were a bonus (especially since we broke one in our short-term apartment and had to replace it – shhh, don’t tell our landlord). The Concha y Toro wine tour was something different and easy to do from the city of Santiago for an afternoon, but very different that the high-end wine tasting tour we did in Mendoza. We learned that large corporate wineries aren’t really our gig, but we still like their wines!

CPTJMIY: Dave Kovac on Volunteer Vacations, Global Village, and finding balance (Part 2)

Posted on August 18, 2010 by ryan

It’s been a long and arduous 3 day wait, but I’m thrilled to let you know that you need not wait any longer… Part 2 of our interview with the very first featured Crazy Person That Just Might Inspire You (CPTJMIY) is here.

I’m sure you all read part 1 of our interview with Dave Kovac which focused mainly on his inspiring involvement in Habitat for Humanity’s Global Village international trip program (if not, you should!). While reading it, you may have wondered how he possibly manages to spend 2-8+ weeks a year out of the country building houses and making a true difference for people in remote parts of the world. It’s one thing to go on a trip every once in a while, but how has he managed to balance it with the rest of his life/career/family for several years now? We’re glad you asked. That’s what part 2 is all about. Let’s find out:

Dave Kovac – The interview (part 2)

As a trip leader, Dave is forced to wear many hats. Sometimes simultaneously.

Ok, a little more about you…

We hear you actually have a “real job”. When you’re not leading trips, what do you do with your time?

I split between a couple of things. I teach at Oregon State University, I own/manage some rental properties, I do a little consulting, and I’m easing out of my 12-year tenure as a house-dad.

Did you intentionally choose a career that would allow you the kind of flexibility you currently have? If so, how? And if not, how did you end up this way?

That’s an interesting question. I don’t see myself as having a “career.” I had one. I prepared for it and I worked for it and I followed a well-worn path that was to put me in a career position as a college administrator, but I found that the deeper I got into the career, the less time I spent doing what I initially intended on doing. It’s a fairly common occurrence — people join a profession because they enjoy the work and then move up the administrative ladder moving further and further from the work that they enjoyed so much in the first place. Our reward for doing a good job is oftentimes being given extra jobs for which we have little preparation or interest (or even skill). That produces ambiguity, loss of confidence, stress… In education, at least, good teachers are often promoted to administrative positions which require a completely different skill set. One goes from displaying the ability to connect with students and impart knowledge to balancing budgets and making personnel decisions. That’s not what most teachers are either trained for or want to do.

Now back to your question. When I stopped my career I thought it would be temporary but “knew” that it necessitated a change of some kind. I stopped in order to be a “house-dad” for our three growing children. My wife was in a position/career that she was devoted to and our kids needed the time and attention. It was weird and scary and oddly threatening — to me and to people in our community. A lot of people — including myself — seemed very uncomfortable with the notion of purposely jumping off of the career track. Some were disappointed, many were confused, and a lot, I discovered, were envious of me doing what they secretly hoped to do. So I added the title “consultant” to my name plate and shopped that around for a bit. It was easier than trying to explain what I was doing, an understandable “career-move” (if it brought in the bucks), and wasn’t untrue: I did a lot of consulting — I consulted with the family on what we should have for dinner, I consulted with the kids on when their soccer practices were, I consulted with my wife on what needed to be done around the house…

I began reconstructing my interests, skills, and priorities — not necessarily in any planned sort of way — in order to feel better about what I was doing. What I’ve come to is not a career, really. It’s a mix of commitments, responsibilities, interests, and involvements. I’m much busier now. I’m pretty scattered. I am crazy. But that’s my life — the one I’ve defined, and not the one defined by my “career.”

Dave and some of his 'clients'

How do you balance being on the road for extended periods of time with work, family, other responsibilities at home?

I don’t know if I balance it. It doesn’t feel balanced. But it doesn’t feel chaotic or stressful, either. I’ve been able to incorporate family into the trips by taking each of my children, separately, on a Habitat build. My wife will tell you that she counts on me being gone a few weeks out of the year so that she can have some alone time with the kids or visit relatives that we just haven’t had the time to see together. I do think that my teaching suffers when classes are interrupted by me being gone, so I’m trying to work on that. But that’s just a matter of me being more conscious of my schedule.

Looks pretty well balanced to us

Do you feel you’ve had to make any major sacrifices to find this balance?

Not really. This is more of who I am. I’m following my interests, I feel I’m making a difference, and I believe that the good I do in one area of my life seeps through to other areas. I do miss having spending money, but that never worked out so well for me anyway.

What are the biggest challenges? Biggest rewards?

The biggest challenge is packing. Oh, and completing expense reports. As for the rewards…they are plentiful, my son.

Any advice for people trying to create a better balance in their life (for instance, people who work crazy hours in jobs they don’t love)?

The easiest advice that someone could give is, “hey, if you don’t like what you’re doing, stop.” But that’s not very realistic. When we’re talking about achieving balance we’re really talking about developing our own identity. Who am I? What am I good at? What inspires me? What do I like to do? Seek out those activities that help answer those questions and reinforce what you’ve discovered. It’s funny, but I’ve found that during those times I’ve been completely stressed and anxious, instead of subtracting from my list of commitments, I ended up adding to them so that the sum of those commitments held meaning. “Who am I?” is not a question that can or should have one answer — it’s a compilation of many things.

Anything else to add?

If this makes me crazy, then yeah, I’m nuts.

One last thing…

When/where is your next trip? How do you sign up?

Thanks for mentioning that. We are still looking for participants in my next Global Village adventure to Udon Thani, Thailand in November. After that, it looks like I’ll be heading back to Macedonia in June. Habitat for Humanity’s Global Village program maintains a constantly updated trip schedule at http://www.habitat.org/cd/gv/schedule.aspx . Look at when and were trips are being scheduled throughout the world and if my name’s in the trip leader column — bonus!

Consider Global Village for your next vacation; these people did.

Thanks Dave!! We definitely think that you are Crazy–and to us, that is high praise. We are inspired and we’re hoping that this interview will inspire others as well.

You can get more info about Dave’s upcoming trip to Udon Thani, Thailand in this brochure. Also, check out the Global Village website for info about this and other trips; they are happening all the time, all over the world and they are 100% worth checking out.

Meet, Plan, Go! September 14th in thirteen cities. Be there. Seriously.

Posted on August 17, 2010 by ryan

Listen up. This is important. We want to tell you about an outstanding event that will be taking place on Sept. 14th in thirteen cities across the US and Canada called Meet, Plan, Go! Its entire purpose is to provide you with inspiration, contacts and resources to “plan the trip of a lifetime” – and then go. You’re probably wondering how much something this awesome would cost. Well, I hope you’re sitting down: this event is free. If you live anywhere near one of these cities, we think you should go. To be honest, we’re pretty bummed that the fact that we’re already traveling prevents us from going. Please go and tell us about it so that we can live vicariously through YOU (seriously, it’s the least you could do). 🙂

If that wasn’t enough to convince you, read on…

If you’ve followed this blog at all in the past, then you know a little bit about our story–we were management consultants with intense jobs for a long time, now we’re hanging out in South America applying our high-intensity, driven personalities to enjoying life rather than making PowerPoint slides. We won’t be doing this forever, and we wouldn’t want to. Even if we had the finances to enable doing it forever (which we most decidedly do not), we’d eventually need to go back to doing something that felt like it gave us a purpose. Going on a long-term trip like this doesn’t mean abandoning your career or even your current job, it just means taking a break. That’s why we like the term “Career Break”, which we keep coming across more and more during our adventure.

The more we reflect on our experience and the more we learn about what others get out of taking Career Breaks (whether they last 2 months or 12), the more enthusiastic we are about suggesting them to others–everyone really. I can’t think of anyone that wouldn’t benefit from taking a step back for a little while. It brings perspective. It allows you to see more clearly what it is that you want. It may lead to you returning to your previous job/career with a renewed vigor and sense of purpose, or it may lead you to new epiphanies about who you are and what you really want to be doing. Regardless of where it leads you, by the end you’ll know yourself better, be more excited about life and probably have some great photos and crazy stories that you can use to make your friends jealous.

If you read our recent post on career option-value and identified with anything in it, you’ll agree that one of the very best ways to remove the stress from your life is to embrace and enjoy failure rather than running from it. There is no better way to feel like a failure on a daily basis than to immerse yourself in a foreign culture–trust me, it’s pretty fascinating to go from being a senior client advisor to only having the ability to communicate at the level of a 5th grader! Not only will you be humbled on a daily basis, but you’ll be away from the constant influence of your friends and colleagues who, in an attempt to be supportive, tend to reinforce the idea that you should stay on the path you’re on. They may be right, but it’s more important what you think–and it’s almost impossible to get real perspective without getting away from it all every so often. Long-term travel is the best way I know to do it.

Still not convinced? We’ve got reinforcements…

I could go on and on (and you’ve seen me do it!), but instead I’d like to turn it over to one of the founders of Meet, Plan, Go! who also happens to be the host of the event in San Francisco to tell you more. Her name is Tara Russell and she is someone you should get to know. Here’s a quick snippet of her bio from the Meet, Plan, Go website:

TARA RUSSELL is a “Life Sabbatical & Long-term Travel Coach” – a Certified Life and Career Coach with a passion for working with clients who dream of taking time off to travel, live, work, study or volunteer abroad. As the Founder and President of Three Month Visa Coaching and Consulting, her mission is to empower her clients to change their lives (and ultimately the world at large), through meaningful international travel experiences.

Let’s talk about this Meet, Plan Go! thing…

Tara, tell us more about the origins of Meet, Plan, Go!… How did it get started and why does it exist?

The seed for Meet, Plan, Go! was planted back in January of 2010 when Michaela Potter and Sherry Ott who founded Briefcase to Backpack were in town and we met up for coffee. We realized that there were so many cool ways that we might work together that what was meant to be a half-hour meeting turned into a 5-hour brainstorming session! Our goal working together has been to take this conversation about Americans and career breaks and start building some critical mass behind it – get it out from the underground and take it national. One thing that came up was the success of a group I have been running for a few years now in SF – SF Travel Book Club and Lectures Series – and we started to wonder what it would look like if we could take the strength of that in-person group dynamic and expand it nationwide by doing a day of coordinated events across the US. From there, Michaela and Sherry were able to leverage the strength of their online network to recruit hosts and panelists from across the US and that’s how Meet, Plan, Go! came to be!

Why do you think that taking a Career Break and traveling is beneficial for people?

I would go beyond even saying “beneficial” – I think career breaks are absolutely essential for people…perhaps now more so than ever. Consider that our office desks are no longer stationary items that we can leave behind after 5pm…with the introduction of cell phones and PDAs, many of us are forever wired and always accessible from the moment we wake up in the morning to the time we go to bed at night. In an age when we are hearing more and more about work /life balance, it seems increasingly difficult to truly “unplug.”

Career breaks and travel give us that opportunity to unplug…to really take a step back, get perspective and regain balance in a way that we just can’t do while we are caught up in the pace of our hectic 9-5. (Or – let’s be honest – given the crazy hours many of us work, our 5-9.)

Travel gives us fresh and new perspectives, expands our horizons, strengthens our sense of adventure, pushes us to challenge ourselves, feeds an appreciation of our own strengths and abilities and provides us with space and time to examine who we are and what we truly want out of life. I’m passionate about helping my clients find that and taking that message national is what MPG is all about!

Who is this event for?

Well, it’s pretty simple, really. Here’s a quick and easy exercise to help readers determine if MPG is right for them…

Close your eyes and imagine taking time for yourself to do exactly what you have always wanted. Do you see:
* Surfing lessons in Costa Rica?

* Taking classes at a local university?

* Hiking the Himalayan Annapurna Circuit in Nepal?

* Renovating your house into the home you dream of?

* Volunteering at an orphanage in Brazil?

* Japanese lessons in Kyoto?

If you came up with anything other than “I’d like to be right here where I am…in my beige cubicle.”, then Meet, Plan, Go! is definitely for you.

This event is for anyone who has ever had a travel dream and wondered how to make it a reality. Anyone who has ever thought “Oh, I would so love to do something like that, but… Anyone who is currently reading this from their tiny little corner of cubicleland and thinking “Man, I wish I was lounging on the beach in Fiji right now.”

You get the picture…if you close your eyes and dream of being somewhere other than where you are, this is the event for you.

What exactly will happen at the event?

We have put together a stellar panel of travel experts – travel writers, photographers, podcasters and bloggers as well as me wearing the hat of Travel Coach. We will be presenting on the big Whys and Hows of career breaks and long-term travel and helping participants get an idea of resources that they turn to when they can start planning and go for support as they move forward.

What do you expect that people will get out of it? Why is it worth their time?

I would say this really breaks down into the “big three” of what you need to make your plans for a career break a success – inspiration, resources, and community. People who attend will be inspired by a panel of speakers / travel industry experts, they will be connected with some of the resources they need to start making their travel dreams a reality and they will be surrounded by a dynamic, supportive community of people who “get it”. Each element of that formula is really key for us.

Ok, let’s talk about the San Francisco event for a minute…

What are the logistics (e.g., when, where, how long, how do people sign up, etc.)?

The SF event is being held on Tuesday, September 14th from 7-9pm at NextSpace in downtown San Francisco. The event is free but participants do need to reserve their space and print and bring their ticket with them. RSVPs can be made at: http://meetplangosanfrancisco.eventbrite.com

Switching gears a bit, let’s talk about you…

How and why did you personally get involved in this?

When I met Sherry and Michaela back in January, there was such a cool synergy there when we combined our skill sets. Given their professional and personal backgrounds and their experience running Briefcase to Backpack and also blogs of their own, they are incredibly savvy about the internet, blogging, online networks and marketing, etc. What I brought to the table was years of experience running in-person travel-related events and also working with one-on-one coaching clients as they prepared for career breaks of their own. From that, (coupled with my own experiences planning and realizing a year-long career break of my own,) I had a keen understanding of the self-imposed limitations and perceived obstacles that often deter people from taking the sabbaticals that they really want. When we put our heads together, in short, I saw the opportunity to work with really cool people on a project I was extremely passionate about – how could I say no?

What do you do with your time when you’re not working on Meet, Plan, Go?

I am thrilled that I get to spend a great deal of my time working with one-on-one travel coaching clients, helping them work through the logistical and emotional preparations that go into making a career break possible. In addition, I’ve been able to do quite a bit of speaking in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond on topics revolving around career breaks, life sabbaticals and long-term travel. Loving my work makes it something I am pleased to dedicate a lot of time to.

When I’m not coaching, reading travel books or arranging events for SF Travel Lit & Lectures or working on MPG, I do my best to get out in this gorgeous city with friends to enjoy all the great sights, music, food and museums that SF has to offer. I also dedicate as much time as possible to my passion for photography and some of my work can be seen at www.greentaraphoto.com

And (of course,) whenever I can, I travel!

A few things to summarize…

This event sounds awesome. It is unbelievably inspiring to me/us that a few people got in a room together and conceived a plan to put something like this together for the sole purpose of inspiring others to get out there and pursue their travel-related passions and that now, in a few weeks, it’s going to happen simultaneously in thirteen cities. We are at the same time impressed by the ambition and execution of the coordinators, inspired by the concept and, perhaps more than anything, jealous that you get to go and we don’t. Don’t miss it-we’ll be angry with you.

Check out the Meet, Plan, Go! website for more info