I temporarily left the EA community in 2018 and that ended up well.

I took a time-out from EA to focus on a job search. I had a job that I wanted to leave, but needed a lot of time and energy to handle all the difficulties that come with a job search. My career path is outside of  EA organizations.

How I did it practically:
- I had  a clear starting point and wrap up existing commitments. I stopped and handed over my involvement in local community building and told my peers about the time-out. I donated my entire year's donation budget in February.
- I set myself some rules for what I would and would not do. No events, no volunteering, no interaction with the community. I deleted social media accounts that I only used for EA. I blocked a few websites, most notably 80000hours.org. I would have donated if my time-out took longer, but without any research.
- I did not set an end point. The time-out would be as long as needed. I returned soon after I signed the new contract, 8 months after my starting point. It could have been much longer.

This helped a lot to get the job search done.

I could not, and did not want to, stop aiming for a positive impact on the world.  I probably did more good overall than if I stayed involved in EA during the job search.

I can recommend this to others and my future self in a similar situation.

[Edit: this whole comment makes less sense after Julia's edits. Thanks for helping out with my questions, Julia.]

I'm not trying to be oblivious or facetious, but I don't really understand what it means when Julia and other people say "it's okay to leave EA" or "it's fine to leave if you need to" or conversely for someone else to say, perhaps to themselves "it's not okay to leave EA".  It doesn't feel... concrete enough? For me to make sense of. I want to taboo the words "fine" and "okay" to try to understand better. 

Sometimes EA is hard for me and I want to leave and I'm like "is it fine? Is it okay?" And like, damn,  that seems like a really hard question. 

I directionally agree with "My guess is that if you feel like you’re drowning, you need to disrupt something about your circumstances, and you’ll eventually be more able to do good work (in EA or outside EA) than if you’d continue struggling in the same place.", especially if people have felt like they're drowning for months instead of e.g. hours.

Some things people could interpret this post as meaning:

• Julia thinks you shouldn't feel bad about yourself if you leave EA (because it wouldn't be healthy or productive). (Idk if this is true, I feel like the fact that I'd be disappointed in myself if I didn't do EA stuff drives me to do actually valuable EA stuff, do we know that self-punishment is always eventually counterproductive?)
• Julia Wise won't hate you if you leave EA (probably true)
• Julia Wise wants to send care and warm feelings towards EAs who leave and EAs who are struggling (probably true)
• Julia Wise thinks that in general, people who want to leave EA probably feel more negative about having that desire than is healthy? Useful? Productive?
• Julia Wise claims no one will resent you leaving EA if you want to (probably false)
• Julia Wise thinks EA will be better off if it has a culture of not resenting people who leave EA (probably?)
• It's guaranteed to not be true that if you leave EA, some sentient beings have a horrible time instead of a good time (probably false)
• In expectation, more sentient beings will have a good time instead of a horrible time, if you leave EA contingent on you wanting to leave EA (?? sounds like Julia agrees it's unclear)

"If it would feel like a relief to have someone's permission to go, you have mine."

This resonates and feels important, thanks for including this, Julia! <3

My take: There's two things we mean by EA:

1. EA the social group / movement. (EA the people)
2. EA the project of improving the world.

It's always ok to leave 1., and it is ok most of the time, but not always, to leave 2.

If you are leaving 2., you should try to figure out why. If it's because you don't really want to improve the world (like most people), I'd prefer you don't leave - but I'm fine with it as long as you're honest about it. 

IMO though, people are more likely to leave 2. because:

• They are burned out or otherwise having a rough time. Take some time off and get back on track :)
• They stopped enjoying "EA the social group". Great, you don't need us to keep improving the world!
• They have other things that are personally more important to them than improving the world (like kids, family, or ideology about open source software). This is totally fine! People need to have good lives of their own!

I did this for EA Austria, where I lived for three years. The community wasn't working for me and I found it demotivating to engage with. I kept in contact with people in EA Spain and online.

I’m excited for your new blog Julia. 🙂

I like these concrete points. I often worry that people will dislike me for things, so if someone is worrying this I hope it frees them.

• I personally won't dislike you for leaving.
• If it would feel like a relief to have someone's permission to go, you have mine.
• I expect the EA community to be healthier / more vigorous if people who are having a terrible time move away from it.

Thanks for writing this. Great to see people encouraging a sustainable approach to EA!

I want to tell you that taking care of yourself is what’s best for impact. But is it?

I claim that this is true:

• Finding personal fulfillment is a positive result in and of itself.
• It's important to prioritize personal needs, otherwise you will not be in a good position to help others (family, friends, charity, etc.).
• Ensuring one's relationship with EA is sustainable can actually lead to more impact over the long run (though this shouldn't be peoples primary goal, personal wellbeing comes first).
• Encouraging a sustainable culture can make EA more welcoming to others.

This post is great and I really admire you for posting it.

Great post! I've been thinking a lot about this lately.