Welcome to the 100-Day Escape Plan

Career Break

Jun 22

Welcome to the 100-Day Escape Plan. A blog where I attempt to give you 100 tips and tricks to building your own path to say bye-bye to burnout. Where we turn FOMO to YOLO. Where we build a map that helps you…

Do It For the Plot.

This thought experiment has been a long time coming in my eyes. There are an entire two generations of working-age people burning out at a faster rate than any generation before us. Entire jobs are dedicated solely to being busy, and efficiency is penalized if it means less time at the desk… or in the office. Job market stress is leaving people feeling stuck, facing tough choices, and facing AI Bots rejecting their resumes. Speaking of AI, that adds to the tension of becoming irrelevant. The burnout makes midlife crises look completely different today. No longer are we buying Maseratis.

Instead, we’re all picking up gardening, farming, and crochet (and hopefully with this, blog reading)

And the data is proving it:

From Fortune 2025: "About 66% of millennials report moderate or high levels of burnout, according to a recent report from Aflac. Gen X trails closely behind with a reported burnout rate of 60%, and Gen Z follows, with a rate of 56%. Baby boomers report the least amount of burnout of the generations, with 39%." (2)
From New York Post 2025: "Two-thirds of Gen Z (68%) are experiencing burnout, as well as 61% of millennial respondents." (3)
From Deloitte 2024: “40% of Gen Z and 35% of millennials [reported] feeling stressed most of the time.” (4)
From Eagle Hill Consulting 2026 in a Regional Survey: “Burnout disproportionately affects younger workers, with rates highest among Gen Z (66%), followed by Millennials (58%), Gen X (53%), and Baby Boomers (37%).”

People are moving faster than their brains and their bodies and their spirits can carry.

We know people need a break, but I would argue they need more than that.

I think they need an Honest-to-God Plan. Because, frankly, sometimes bravery isn’t enough.

I’ve done this “Career Break” thing twice in my life. Each time, I had a different stack of security blankets, whether they were ones I chose, negotiated, saved up for, or just gambled. Each time, those career breaks completely helped me redefine where I wanted my life to go. How I saw myself. And Each Time, the doubters before would say “Why would you do that?” and after would say “That’s amazing you did that.”

So whether it’s that you want to walk across a country or travel the world or whether you want to start a business and build a new life for your family, it helps to know you have guidance to think through each step and make the Escape Plan that works for you.

This Project Is A Bit Selfish

I said this project has been in the works for a long time. Sure, my past experiences have informed a lot of that time, there’s something more to this project. You see, I’ve always wanted to become an author. I have chewed for many years about what my first books would be. I thought about writing my journey through New Zealand, and someday I still might, but it wasn’t enough. If there was going to be time spent writing 300 pages or 30,000 words for publication, it needed to help people. Give the world something they could use. This blog will be my first attempt at building those pages. Everything you see here is going to be a draft of what’s to come.

So please, pitch in your feedback!

Where are the edits and the errors?
What questions do you have that need an answer? (That could Help Me Get 100!)
Where did my life not consider the way your life is? (When it comes to kid-specific issues, I know I’ll have blind spots!)

But Let’s Set Some Expectations

Blogging can often become a burden. Making sure the right photos catch your eye. The right Outline will make it digestible. Ensuring there are enough “SEO” keywords for search engines to care. Frankly, the sheer volume of online details can be exhausting. Hell, setting a schedule of “thou shalt post daily/weekly to be consistent” can be exhausting between caretaking, building two businesses, sales pitching, meetings, and standard living.

And I want none of it for this project.

The important part is the writing, and giving you a path to consider your own options as quickly and as efficiently as I can.

So, if you want to follow along with this Series, “Your 100-Day Escape Plan,” I highly recommend subscribing to the Move the Journey newsletter. There, I will make sure links to the most recent articles are available if you find this type of information (or trolling, whichever way you swing) of interest. There may be other series that I build as well as I continue to explore more book ideas, but this being the first will have my attention for some time.

There’s One Place I Need Your Advice RIGHT NOW

The Title of this series, for now, is “Your 100 Day Escape Plan,” and I struggled to get even that far. I KNOW the title I really want for this project, but I will not be putting it online for ChatGPT to yoink until I’m ready to slap a book cover on this. Which Means that the name of this blog series is WIDE OPEN for changes. Here’s a couple of the others I considered:

So….did I land the right title? Do you Think One of these would be Better? What Do You think? Hit me up in the Comments if you have a vote or another recommendation.

(https://www.hiringlab.org/2026/04/23/new-grads-looking-for-work-the-struggle-is-real/; census.gov)
(Fortune. "Gen Z may think they have it rough, but millennials are the most burnt-out generation." May 23, 2025)
(New York Post. "Three-quarters of Gen Z is looking to switch jobs for this reason." April 28, 2025.)
(Deloitte 2024 Gen Z and Millennial Survey (reported by Carrington West, January 2025).
https://www.eaglehillconsulting.com/news/workforce-burnout-survey-2025/

career breakcareer changegap yearadventureexpeditionbusiness

Dr. Alexandra Swanson