Taking a year off - imagine the possibilities

"Nothing is work unless you'd rather be doing something else." - J.M Barrie

Picture yourself taking a year off from work. Picture it as a paid leave, a sabbatical, like a professor.

By the way, why is it that professors get sabbaticals? They already get one every year -- it's called SUMMER. Plus they have all those conferences and visiting professorships. It's the rest of us who need a break.

Well, back to the point, which is imagining all you could do with a year off -- get in shape, get closer to your family, friends, and your inner self, do all the "if onlies." Ah, a glorious picture.

Now, picture that you're taking a year off because you got laid off, and your plan is to stretch the severance package to cover the year. Then, picture telling your spouse.

Here's how such a conversation went for a British ad executive (living in Australia), Nigel Marsh, telling his wife, Kate, picking up where he suggests they live on his severance pay.

KATE: How long would that last?

NIGEL: If we were sensible, it could last for a year.

KATE: What type of sensible?

NIGEL: Well, we'd have to move to a smaller house. And sell the Subaru. And the nanny would have to go. Apart from that, not much would have to change.

KATE: And what would happen at the end of the year?

NIGEL: We'd be (bleep)ed. All our savings would be gone. I'd be a forgotten, 40-year-old advertising executive who hadn't worked for a year. Unemployable.

KATE: So I get twice the husband, half the income, and at the end of the year we'll both have to work at Woolworths?

NIGEL: Basically.

KATE: (Thinks for a moment.) If we do this, will you be less of an arse?"

And so the deal was done. Okay, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "They have Woolworths in Australia?"

No, wait . . . you're thinking, so if only I can be enough of a jerk, then my spouse will be . . . well, not sympathetic, but susceptibly desperate.

In the case of Nigel Marsh, it was the start of his year of living cheaply while stepping outside the narrow path of corporate success. He recorded his adventures in the book "Fat, Forty and Fired," which his publisher mailed to me nearly a year ago.

Normally, if I haven't read a book within a few weeks, I donate it to the library, but not this one -- that title, and the cover art (a fat guy in swim trunks, socks and sandals) wouldn't let me give it away. And am I glad -- it's the liveliest piece of nonfiction I've read this year, and it calls for another alliteration -- fast, funny, and fulfilling.

I read the book expecting career advice, but its wisdom drew a larger circle, taking in and taking on travel, children, religion, and drinking. Being an ad guy, Marsh has given up on dignity as part of his understanding that there's no topic that can't be made funny. (That's one of the reasons I adore advertising people.)

For instance, he describes his weight problem by recounting the evening his son explained what they'd learned at school that day, saying:

"In Indonesia, rather than using the word 'very' before a word they just repeat the word. So you would be 'fat fat' not 'very fat.' Cool, isn't it?" But just as easily as he mocks his weight, he turns philosophical about a drinking problem and his experiences with sobriety, including this earthy gem:

"The voice (telling me to drink) didn't go away. But I started to tell it to (bleep) off rather than attempt to reason with it."

Near the end of the book, nine months into unemployment, Marsh tells us: "I had eventually found (or created) a set of circumstances I was totally happy with and had no desire to change. Almost immediately upon coming to this realization, disaster struck. I was offered a job."

I won't give away his decision and what transpired after, but I will end by quoting his point about how he and other male colleagues are trying "to have it all," striving to be both committed executives and involved family men: "If it didn't work for women, why on earth do we think it will work for men?"

Dale Dauten is a syndicated columnist. He can be reached at dale@dauten.com.