• Alma Rex-Ezonfade spent over a year saving up $51,300 to take an "adult gap year."
• She initially found it difficult to do nothing but learned to enjoy herself and explore new hobbies.
• She launched her own clothing brand, is applying to 9-to-5 jobs, and plans to take more sabbaticals.

Editor's note: This list was first published in May 2024 and most recently updated on January 2, 2025.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 31-year-old Alma Rex-Ezonfade based in Toronto, Canada. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

On my 29th birthday, I opened a savings account and put $500 in it. I had told myself that for my 30th birthday, I would gift myself a one-year sabbatical, and this was my first step in making that dream of taking an "adult gap year" a reality.

I was tired of working and always being on top of things. I immigrated to Canada from Nigeria when I was 22 for my master's degree and started working right after graduating. It felt like I had been running on a hamster wheel, and I was just going, going, going, going.

I calculated my budget for the year

Before taking my gap year, I was a customer success manager at Astreya making around 110,000 CAD ($80,500) and a content creator. Between my 9-to-5 salary and my income from working with brands and doing campaigns, I was making nearly 200,000 CAD ($146,600) a year.

I calculated how much I actually needed to save based on my spending at the time.

For necessities like rent, car payments, groceries, gas, my phone bill, and utilities, I estimated around 4,200 CAD ($3,100) a month. I also decided I wanted to travel, which I knew would be a bit pricey because I'm not a budget traveler. I planned for 18,000 CAD ($13,200) for two big trips and a number of smaller ones.

Altogether, I calculated that I would need to save around 70,000 CAD ($51,300) for my sabbatical, which I did by putting most of my content creator income into my sabbatical fund. If I didn't have my job as a content creator, I would've picked up a part-time job to generate that supplemental income.

I also cut back on expenses. I was never too shy to say "I can't afford that" or "I can't do that activity," because I was planning for something that had way higher priority than going out and spending $200 in one night.

I left my job but struggled to not do anything

Saving up took me a little longer than I had planned, but I quit my job in April 2023.

The day I quit, I just spent the whole day at home, watching the TV blankly. I didn't do anything else; I just needed my brain to shut off.

On Monday, I woke up at 8 a.m. as usual because I forgot that I didn't have a job. Then I remembered I could sleep in, but I was already awake, so I tried to figure out my new routine.

I started to put together a plan, and then I realized that would just defeat the whole purpose. The plan was to let go.

Still, I didn't feel like I could just not do anything. I found myself planning for my upcoming trips, brainstorming content ideas for my YouTube channel, and posting more regularly on my Instagram page. I had thought about starting my own clothing brand for years, so I started working on ideas for that too.

One of my friends said to me, "The whole point was for you to not work. Why can't you not work?"

The week after I quit, I checked myself into a hotel for a couple of days, ordered room service, and cried the entire time. My tears were tears of gratitude, tears of exhaustion, tears of relief. I was letting myself feel like, "Okay, I did it and I'm here."

I was used to being a high performer, managing a team, having deliverables, and doing all these things. I had to get used to the idea of not working and get over feeling like I wasn't useful because I wasn't being productive. I had to shift to having my validation come from my own happiness and seeing my value beyond my work output.

Three weeks into my sabbatical, one of my former bosses reached out to me to tell me about a contract role at Google that she wanted me to interview for. Honestly, I almost took it, because I wasn't used to the idea of not having work.

It took some getting used to, but eventually, I was able to go a whole week without doing any work.

Did I make the right decision?

The first few months when I was on sabbatical, I was so sad.

I looked at all the money that I had put in my sabbatical account and thought of everything else that I could have done with that money rather than lounge for a whole year.

Maybe I should just take it out and buy a house, I thought. I even asked my real-estate agent friend to look up properties for me, but I knew that if I bought the house instead, I'd be miserable, always wondering what I could've achieved if I just took the year off.

I remember talking to my therapist and trying to validate the decision time after time. At the end of the day, I realized that I was at the best point of my life to give this gift to myself. A few months in, once I settled on that, I started to have fun with the idea that I was on a sabbatical.

I learned to enjoy myself

I enjoyed having the luxury of time to do whatever I wanted.

I fell in love with working out again. I started coloring, drawing, and doing ceramics. I started reading again and got back into writing. I spent more time with myself and with my family. I picked up childhood hobbies again, like building Legos and taking Polaroid photos. I also cooked more and tried new coffee spots in Toronto.

Some of my favorite memories from my sabbatical are the many days I spent just sitting on my couch watching TV and only getting up to eat. I finished all six seasons of "Downton Abbey" in one week. I also watched all of "Schitt's Creek" and a lot of Korean shows.

Working on my clothing brand became a passion project. I learned about fabrics and the fashion industry — I enjoyed just learning things for the sake of learning.

I visited friends and family in other countries, did some birthday trips with friends, went on a seven-day cruise to the Caribbean, and spent four weeks traveling Europe.

I launched my own clothing brand and am looking at full-time roles

In May, after a full year of my sabbatical, my sabbatical funds were almost fully drained, and my income as a content creator was keeping me afloat. I thought I'd be panicking about my finances, but taking the time off helped me develop a mindset shift; I knew I'd figure it out one way or another. I was the most broke I'd ever been, but I'd never been happier.

That month, I launched my fashion brand, which has been doing well. I've been focused on running and growing it full-time, and in the near future, I hope to hire a team to take over the day-to-day tasks. In the meantime, I've been financially relying on savings and my content creator income, including several brand deals.

I've always been open to returning to a 9-5 workplace after my gap year, and I've been applying to roles that allow me to leverage my skills as a customer success manager, an entrepreneur, and a creative. I plan to continue running my clothing brand full-time as well.

I plan to take many more sabbaticals

I'm very happy with my path. I just feel kind of sad that I had to take a whole year off of work to find joy in my life.

One of the biggest things I'm taking away from this sabbatical is realizing that a lot of things are not that serious. When you're an immigrant, a lot of things are that serious; I had to start life over again in Canada and I had to excel at this life. But I just kept going and going and going, and I realized that I needed to enjoy life.

I'd absolutely do a sabbatical again. My loved ones have pointed out that I'm less grumpy, I shout less, and I'm less controlling. My plan is to work in a corporate job for another three years to get more experience and knowledge, take another year off at 35, and repeat that cycle until I retire.

My sabbatical was really about redefining what happiness looks like at different points in my life. I needed time away to de-stress and prioritize the things I thought were important, and now, I'm going back with a fresher outlook on my professional career and personal life goals.

If you took a sabbatical and would like to share your story, email Jane Zhang at [email protected].

• President-elect Trump confirmed his intent to use the US military for mass deportations in the US.
• Laws sharply limit the roles that federal troops can fill in US law enforcement.
• Trump could rely on state-led National Guard personnel or attempt to bypass a long-standing law.

President-elect Donald Trump said this week that his incoming administration plans to follow through on his campaign promise of using the US military to execute his mass deportation plan.

This puts his incoming administration on a potential collision course with long-standing laws and practices that sharply limit the use of US troops in law enforcement.

Trump's border czar has said US troops could assist immigration dragnets through non-enforcement roles that involve building structures, gathering intelligence, or flying migrants to the countries they fled. National Guard troops that report to state governors can support law enforcement, but the Posse Comitatus Act bars active-duty and federalized Guardsmen from acting as law enforcement.

Trump could rely on state-led National Guardsmen, however, or attempt to sidestep Posse Comitatus altogether through the Insurrection Act of 1807. But this would be an extreme move that's sure to trigger fierce opposition from state governors, lawsuits, and military officials.

"If the president were looking to use the Instruction Act to enforce immigration as a federal law, that would be a pretty extraordinary use, and that would be way out of custom," Mark Nevitt, who served as a judge advocate general in the US Navy, told Business Insider. "Arguably, there is an authority to do that, but again, it would be way out of the norms of its historic use."

When asked how the incoming administration would confront these limitations, Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump's transition team, said the president-elect "will marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation" in US history.

"The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail, like deporting migrant criminals and restoring our economic greatness," Leavitt told Business Insider in an emailed statement. "He will deliver."

What happens if Trump orders the US military to assist?

Each military branch has a civilian general counsel, who would likely be among the first officials to review whether a presidential order complies with the Posse Comitatus Act, said Gary Solis, a former Marine JAG. He described two potential scenarios:

1. The Army's general counsel concludes it is lawful, allowing US armed forces to move forward with Trump's order. This scenario would likely trigger a slew of lawsuits attempting to block its enforcement, Solis said.
2. The general counsel rejects the order, giving lower-level commanders the grounds to refuse it.

"But no law can interpret a presidential order in advance," Solis said. "Some orders would be obviously unlawful, but any order issued from Trump's office would be very carefully worded in an effort to make its execution by the military bulletproof."

Nevitt, an associate law professor at Emory University, said the PCA provision is "really, really nuanced" and doesn't explicitly "prohibit the National Guard from enforcing immigration laws."

The president can legally deploy the National Guard for domestic law enforcement through cooperation with state governors, provided that the military force is operating under state control and not federalized through the Insurrection Act and thus subjected to PCA restrictions.

"You can imagine that some governors will be more excited about this mission than others," Nevitt told BI. "You can fill in the blank on who those might be, but probably more Republican governors that are more friendly to President Trump. Those who are less friendly to President Trump would maybe not be as interested in taking on this mission."

"If President Trump tried to use this authority from a red state like Wyoming or Texas and put those National Guard troops in a blue state that is unwilling to accept them, that would be quite a crisis," he continued. "I think the state that did not want to accept these outside National Guard troops could say this is a violation of their own sovereignty, and they'd have a pretty powerful case that they could find a way to a lawsuit."

What roles can the US military fill?

On his social media platform, Truth Social, the former president this week commented "TRUE!!!" on a post about his plans to "declare a national emergency" and "use military assets" to carry out sweeping raids to deport millions of migrants a year.

Declaring a national emergency can provide the president with a broader set of powers to respond to crises, but it doesn't authorize the military to act as domestic law enforcers. The Trump administration may not attempt to use them as such to avoid triggering a backlash.

Agencies like US Immigration and Customs Enforcement lead efforts to locate and arrest migrants. A more robust immigration crackdown could require building bigger detention centers, where migrants are held through the deportation process. That's where Defense Department funding and personnel could come in.

Trump's "border czar," Thomas Homan, said using military funds would be a "force multiplier" in an immigration crackdown; Trump's first administration redirected billions of dollars from the Pentagon to build sections of the wall on the US-Mexico border.

But Homan, who formerly led ICE, specified that military personnel would be assigned "non-enforcement duties, such as transportation, whether it's on ground or air, infrastructure, building, [and] intelligence."

"We're hoping DoD will help us with air flights because there's a limited number of planes ICE has contracts with, so DoD can certainly help with air flights all across the globe," Homan said in a Tuesday interview on Fox Business Network.

Will troops want to become police?

Aside from the many legal challenges, Nevitt said he thinks that the troops might be reluctant to participate on the stance they signed up to be warfighters — not policemen.

"The military has, historically, not wanted this mission," Nevitt, who served in the Navy for two decades, said. "The federal military forces want to fight and win our nation's wars; they want to secure the nation's national security; they want to do operational deployments."

"In asking federal military forces to enforce immigration laws, there is going to be a strong cultural allergic reaction that's well grounded in civil-military norms," he added.

Nevitt said he thought federal troops carrying out domestic law enforcement would tarnish the "special trust" the American public holds in the military.

"As a veteran, the military is seen as protecting this country, keeping our country safe," he said. "There's going to be a lot of static if President Trump asks the military to do something that is beyond what they have historically been asked to do."