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AI-driven job disruption is triggering a deeper identity crisis in tandem with economic change.

When identity centers on work, role loss destabilizes meaning, self-worth, and direction.

Burnout and disconnection often signal an overreliance on achievement for identity.

Expanding identity beyond work builds resilience as roles evolve or disappear.

In 2006, my husband and I did the thing so many overworked people talk about on vacation and never actually do.

We checked out completely.

At 32, we were both feeling deeply burned out and decided to take a break. Like many people, we had gone somewhere, fallen in love with it, and said, “We could live here.” The difference is that we actually did it.

We packed up eleven suitcases and moved from downtown Chicago to the middle of the jungle in Costa Rica. Years later, in 2013, that experience became the basis for Radical Sabbatical, our memoir about what happened when we stepped away from our old lives.

What feels striking to me now is how relevant that story has become again.

What prompted our sabbatical then was burnout. What feels relevant now is that many people are being pushed into a different version of that same reckoning, not by choice, but through disruption.

Generative AI is already changing work in real time. Roles are shifting, narrowing, and even disappearing. While much of the conversation focuses on efficiency and economics, there........

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