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Why you might consider a midlife sabbatical and 5 questions to answer before you do

Ok, yeah… taking an extended time off would be great and probably do wonders for your immediate mental health, and also help you gain some valuable perspective. But gas is $5/gallon and the median home price is sneaking up on half a million dollars… so how exactly are you supposed to afford to take a midlife sabbatical?

Early Retirement Might Not Be Best For The Brain, Study Suggests

So basically, if you shut your brain off too much, you’re not going to get it back. The secret probably isn’t that you have to keep working, it’s that you have to find something to keep your noggin sharp

More Stories Below, but first some new content in the News Sidequest Podcast Universe…

Auditory Anthology

SCI-FI SHORT STORIES - NARRATED BY DARREN MARLAR & PRODUCED BY KEITH CONRAD

The Winner & Maiden Voyage - Chapter Eight: Hong Kong - On the maiden voyage of the MV Atlas, the world’s largest cruise ship, a ghost operative team attempts a silent extraction of a high-value defector carrying an impossible secret: an ancient, non-human artifact. Hidden amongst twenty-two thousand passengers and stalked by an elite foreign intelligence network, the team must execute a precise, high-stakes tradecraft operation in international waters — one wrong move could blow their cover and trigger a confrontation that could break the global order.

Our companion short story, “The Winner,” follows an ordinary man named Dennis who improbably wins a full-ownership condo aboard Atlas through a contest — only to find small, impossible details waiting for him in his new home that make the win feel a lot less like luck. It’s a quieter, stranger corner of this world, and it raises questions about Atlas itself that the main story hasn’t answered yet.

The Winner & Maiden Voyage - Chapter Eight: Hong Kong Keith Conrad / Darren Marlar Episode

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Also Worth A Look…

• Rage Retreats Take Wellness to a Higher Decibel - Since you likely can’t afford to take a midlife sabbatical, might I suggest screaming into the void?

• How Long Can You Really Leave A Cat Alone? Veterinarians Are Clearer Than You Would Expect - It turns out ideally it’s 8-12 hours, and 24-48 hours before they’d start to have some problems. It’s not “Pretty much as long as you want” as most people probably spent their lives thinking. I don’t know what to believe in anymore

• Making Babies On Mars Could Be Harder Than Expected, Sperm Study Hints - It’s probably for the best. Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it's cold as hell. And there's no one there to raise them if you did

• Robot Umps Making Baseball Games a Little Longer - I think they’ll all get better at deciding which calls are worth challenging and which to let go. It would be interesting to see the stats in ejections since people have more recourse now

• Researchers Unearth a Clay Tablet Inscribed With the World’s Oldest Peace Treaty - I don’t see any reason why that wouldn’t still be binding, it’s literally written in stone. Everybody should stop fighting immediately

• Popeyes customers sue for $1.5M over ‘condom-like’ object in chicken - That brings up more questions than could ever possibly be answered

• Man demolishes house with tractor after rival ‘urinated on his dad and brother’s graves’ - It looks like we have a 21st century Hatfield–McCoy situation brewing

• Son's gift earns dad a $100,000 Maryland Lottery prize - Someone’s going to be getting a great Christmas gift this year

• Texas man accused of crashing his car through a grocery store so he could use the bathroom - When you gotta go, you gotta go