I never took a gap year. I regret it now

May 26, 2026 — 5:00am

I didn’t have a gap year.

After school and four years at university, I went directly into a job. And that job led to another job, in another state, which led to yet another job in yet another state.

I didn’t stop. I didn’t travel, except interstate. And when I finally started working for myself a few years later, the travels were part of the work, and the only gaps were those periods of downtime in employment all freelancers experience.

Stop? Not me.

I wish I had, though. I never backpacked around Europe or took the Hippie Trail to Thailand or Goa like many of my contemporaries did.

I’m envious of all the stories of people met, places visited before they became tourist havens, and (retrospectively) all the comic near-disasters.

Those experiences formed people’s lives, and the stories, often repeated, became part of their personal legends.

The gap year is an honoured tradition in Australia for students bridging two big life events – schooling and career. The purpose is to develop independence and teach problem-solving.

And, of course, have some wild fun before it’s back to serious commitments.

It’s exciting and courageous, and not just for the students. Parents are usually anxious because young people don’t always have a great sense of self-preservation. It takes some courage to let your kids go, and even fund it.

But the gap year isn’t just for the young. The “grown-up gap year” is an idea that’s catching on, for couples as well as solo travellers.

Most “grown-up gap years” are not taken to blow up lives, but to enrich them.

Some people, mid-career, who have worked consistently for two or three decades, feel the often desperate need to step back for a while for the sake of their mental health.

It’s the same for some people in the “sandwich generation” who have been carers of their children and now are carers of their parents.

For some of these, there’s the prospect that they’ll be needed even more in the future as family support means they want to carve some time out now. Empty-nesters who are still working find there’s a sweet spot while they’ve got the budget to take the plunge.

Then there’s plain old FOMO – the sense there’s a world of experiences out there they will miss if they don’t seize the moment now.

Maybe they haven’t done the gap year as a student, like me. Maybe it wasn’t possible when they were younger. Gen X, who started working in a recession, may not have been able to afford to delay their working lives or the financial outlay for a year overseas, which was also my case.

Millennials are so busy holding down multiple jobs, raising kids and saving for a house (or skyrocketing rent) that many wish they’d travelled more before they’d settled down.

Identity and how people perceive themselves is an important factor. I’ve often heard people lament that they’ve lost a sense of self during these caretaking years. Mostly, but not exclusively, those caretakers are women.

That was the case for Sydney woman Monique van Tulder, who wrote a book about it, A Grown Up’s Gap Year, after feeling drained by “being everything to everyone”. At 54, she needed a break, so she “ran away” from her family and busy career to Europe. (Spoiler: she came back.)

She says she took off solo “in search of a missing person. Herself”. The self she came back with is now a bestselling author, clinical nutritionist and certified wellbeing coach.

This reminds me of the popular 1980s movie Shirley Valentine, in which a bored British housewife runs off to a Greek island and finds love and personal reinvention, and Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert’s hugely influential memoir about running away from her marriage and finding spiritual awakening in India and Bali. (Although she was an early adopter, doing this at 34.)

But not all journeys are about reinvention. Running away from and running to something are different ideas.

Most “grown-up gap years” are not taken to blow up lives, but to enrich them. (They can do both, of course.) If you’ve had a taste of what short-term travel can do for mental wellbeing, then the dream is to travel slowly, more deeply, and really savour it.

Carpe diem, and so on. Even if the timing is difficult or if it offers some personal or financial risk.

Many people recognise the wisdom of this, knowing that very little about life is certain, except that we won’t be around forever.