Are you sure it's that, or could it be because they find they have trouble relating to someone who is in such a privileged financial position to do nothing for two years, when they themselves may be financially insecure?
People relate through shared struggle and experience. When you say, "I don't work and I don't need to", you've dashed any sense of camaraderie a stranger, or even many friends, might have felt.
To answer your question more directly: I've considered it, and that's probably the case for some of those interactions (see above), but the majority of the ones I'm specifically thinking of are interactions with people that I know for a fact are much better off financially than I and make just as much (if not more) than I do/did.
To put it another way – who wouldn't take a two year sabbatical if they could? The fact that it's rare, even among well-paid tech workers, is a good indicator that it's not within the realm of relatability for most.
I also don't think it's necessarily a judgement of privilege. Consider the reverse scenario: a party of people enjoying their sabbaticals, and one person with a desk job. No-one's going to hold a conversation for long with that person, simply because their day-to-day experiences are not relatable. The sabbatical crowd will want to talk about long-term travel, how to stave off boredom, and the interesting startup ideas they're working on. No-one wants to hear this one guy's stories about scrum drama, getting a promotion, and taking their kids to the recent company outing. His stories may be positive or negative, boring or interesting, but no-one else can commiserate with their own current experience. For anything topical you're left with sports and the weather.
>To put it another way – who wouldn't take a two year sabbatical if they could?
It seems a lot of people, actually. Again, I can't speak for everyone, but even many of my close friends, who I know a lot about their financial situations and have actually had this conversation with, have even said that they could take time off just as I did and have no financial issues at all, but still would not do it because they feel too pressured by societal expectations to always have a job.
>I also don't think it's necessarily a judgement of privilege. Consider the reverse scenario: a party of people enjoying their sabbaticals, and one person with a desk job. No-one's going to hold a conversation for long with that person, simply because their day-to-day experiences are not relatable. The sabbatical crowd will want to talk about long-term travel, how to stave off boredom, and the interesting startup ideas they're working on. No-one wants to hear this one guy's stories about scrum drama, getting a promotion, and taking their kids to the recent company outing. His stories may be positive or negative, boring or interesting, but no-one else can commiserate with their own current experience. For anything topical you're left with sports and the weather.
There is far more to talk about than just sports/weather and work-related stuff. Even when I was employed, most of my friend group was not in the same industry and we were still able to have lengthy conversations even though most of the group didn't even know what "scrum" is, or never had to worry about a promotion, or never considered startups.
My experience has been that the topics of conversation or ability to commiserate isn't the issue. I've been in situations where I have had lengthy, wonderful conversations with a person where we clearly connect and can relate to each other, but as soon as I drop the "I am currently unemployed" bomb, their entire attitude toward me will change for the worse. (FWIW, I've also been in situations where their attitude has changed for the better, but I find those to be rarer)
I genuinely wish no one ever had to experience anything similar to what I experienced.
txcwpalpha, some portion of those who "treat you like a pariah" are probably these people. The good news is that such people are of no use to YOU, and you just dodged a bullet.
I don't want to necessarily promote a cynical view of the entire world, because these people are still thankfully a small portion of the total. My bigger point is that a surprising number of people whom I experienced as rude, standoffish, nasty, etc. turned out later to also have been dishonest, hiding something, and/or actively engaged in wrongdoing (be it right there, or in some other part of their lives). Not sure whether the stress of being deceptive leads them to be shitty toward others, or if a shitty worldview leads to both... probably the latter... but in short, shittiness is rarely confined to just the one area of a person's life that concerns social interactions. And rarely does it have anything whatsoever to do with you. It has to do with them - in fact I would say it's a marker, a fog beacon calling out "BEEEEP - this person is shitty in this observable way and probably other currently-unobservable ways - BEEEEP." Just think about it like this: if talking to someone feels like you're talking to a gangster, or like you just went to prison, that's probably because that person belongs there. I highly recommend spending time around some scumbags just to get the flavor.
