“The wind blew along the surface of the sea.”
It’s the above view that I’ll always remember when I first arrived in Paris. And now 3 and a half years later as I took this picture I was saying “goodbye”. Not only to the view, but to my life in Paris.
I relocated from Ireland to live and work in my dream location. It was in 2008 that I had fallen in love with Paris. After 8 years of pining for this city and all the magic it contained in my mind I had arrived. I started my new life with all my expectations, dreams, hopes, fantasies. None of those ended up mattering much. The experience was the experience. And it marked me in ways I never would have guessed.
I have made a habit of picking up and moving every few years since I first left home at 18 for college. Each place I have lived has made a lasting impression on me. The first months have a steep curve in terms of collecting and enjoying new experiences and after a year the curve flattens out. Eventually I find myself at what I feel is the 90% of what I am capable of experiencing. I could spend my whole life chasing the last 10%. Time is tragically short and life only feels like it’s playing out when I am being challenged and growing.
In February of this year I returned from a trip to California and found a threatening looking letter slipped under my door. It was a legal document explaining that they had attempted to “serve me” notice that I had to vacate my apartment in 90 days. If you have a furnished apartment in Paris that’s the minimum notice they can give to ask you to vacate.
I had been considering taking some time off from work for awhile at that point. My interest in the coffee industry had been increasingly growing and I had recently started a meditation practice which fascinated me. If I was being forced out of my apartment, it seemed like the decision had been made for me. It was time to step away from my life in Paris and go explore these other interests of mine.
France and their congé sabbatique
Let me take a moment to extol the virtues of working in France. A new employee starts with 25 days paid leave. The work week is 35 hours. Some jobs require working more than 35 hours a week, so as compensation the worker receives compensation days, known as RTT (Réduction du temps de travail). My contract stipulated 18 days RTT. Adding that together along with the public holidays makes for about only 10 months of work per year. It’s like being a teacher. Tell the French that and they laugh. “Our teachers get much more time off than that.”
But wait, there’s more. If you have worked professionally for 6 years and 3 years (consecutive or non-consecutive) at a company you can request a sabbatical leave. The duration of a sabbatical is minimum 6 months and maximum 11 months. At the end of the sabbatical an equivalent job with your company is promised to be waiting for you. This essentially means you might not return to the team you worked on, or be working on the same project, but that you’ll have a job with the same pay and receive any necessary training required to perform the job you return to.
I requested my leave in early March. All that is required is 6 months notice to your employer, your manager’s approval, and some paperwork with HR. Can it be denied? Yes. Depending on the specifics of the company you are working for they can refuse to grant your request. This refusal is really only temporary. If half of your team is out on sabbatical, for instance, they can ask you to wait 6 months. So it becomes not a question of “if”, but “when”.
Be careful what you wish for
Today I begin my 11 month sabbatical. I’m due back to work December 1st, 2020. My leave is unpaid. An ocean of time has opened in front of me. This has been anxiety inducing.
My last night in Paris before I flew to the US to celebrate the Christmas holiday was spent in an AirBnB in a neighborhood close to where I stayed when I first lived in Paris in 2010. I sat on my bed, feeling like in a tourist in a city I had called home these past years, and all at once it hit me that my time in Paris had run out. Kristen Kimball, in her book The Dirty Life, described what it was like to embrace the notion of being married to her new husband Mark. For her to accept this new life she had to let go of her previous one. To do that there is some mourning that has to take place. My last night in Paris was a night of mourning.
After celebrating the New Year in Fort Lauderdale I’m ready to start the traveling that will occupy most of my time off. My first stop will be Mexico City. From there my travels will take me to Colombia, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, Thailand, and Japan, to name a few. As I travel I’ll be experiencing what I can related to coffee and meditation. These are two parts of my life that have brought me incredible joy and inspired extreme curiosity. I look forward to all the people I’ll get to share this time with and the new people I’ll meet along the way. 2020 will no doubt be a memorable year.
Mike Urell 