On sabbatical, I can work even less (and don't have to deal with students), and I get to live in an interesting place I haven't been before. Why wouldn't I want to do that? Ditto conferences.
I don't really understand the question. Academia can be great if you have tenure, but sabbatical is even better, so why not do it.
The answer to your question depends on what you mean by "if you already happy". I think at some level you could apply it to anything ("if you are already happy why do anything different?").
In talking to colleagues, the murmuring is that conferences might be changing. I think the lockdowns really reinforced for a lot of people they didn't like going to conferences in person and feel like much of it could be done online instead. I think a legitimate argument could be made that conferences are often like paying money to add something to your CV... which leads itself to a broader discussion of academic incentives.
I do think there are a lot of people who like the socializing aspect of it though. It's not so much the talks as much as it is the professional informal discussions after the talks, or at dinner, or when people skip the talks and start talking about ideas. I think there's a lot of that that could happen online or something, but not all of it. There's also a lot of people who still operate in person, and just don't "do" online stuff, and so if you want to interact with them, it's best to go. Whether or not conferences in their common form is the best way to do that I'm not sure, but there's something to be said for it as a professional in-person social gathering.
As another poster noted, sometimes it's just fun to travel someplace too.
Sabbaticals are really breaks from non-research activities to have free time for research. If you don't feel you need it, I guess you don't, but why wouldn't you take less responsibilities temporarily for the same salary?
The one big downside to sabbaticals is that they're sometime attached to some noncompete provision, like "if you take a sabbatical you won't leave the institution for X years, and if you do, you pay back your sabbatical pay during that time." So if you're unsure if you want to stay, you might want to avoid that. But then again, that would suggest you're unhappy so it wouldn't apply to your scenario.
Sabbaticals are good because time off from the tedious parts of work is good at any job. Most academics do research while on sabbatical but are free of some teaching and administrative duties.
Conferences are a great way to network, still get work done yet feel like you are participating in a larger community. My professors largely were mostly hermits to a degree, sure there were meetings but mostly to secure funding to organize with their junior hermits with their hyper focuses. So actually getting a chance to breath and hear what others are doing can be fun, also showing off your work must be incredibly satisfying to just be DONE.
Sabbatical, great way to refresh after hyper focusing on only a few topics, not getting much breathing room for other things. Largely I see this as a method for staying creative and staying up to date with what you otherwise would have missed.
1) Provides a chance to get expert feedback on work-in-progress manuscripts and;
2) Provides the only chance many of us get for in-person interaction with colleagues working on similar problems (because many academic departments are staffed to cover all disciplinary bases, not in-depth in any given subfield).
I'm not personally that bothered about sabbatical time/research leave, but if you're in a discipline that writes books rather than papers it's very helpful to have an extended period to sit down and write. And for those who strongly prefer research to teaching then a period of research leave gives relief from the grind of what's seen as a 'day job' and the opportunity to work on research with your full brain. Some people use it similarly to 20% time to work on something novel that might be important.
That said, neither of these things are really vacation. A conference IS your job as an academic, it's a forum for sharing information among peers and an opportunity for networking and collaboration.
Traditionally a sabbatical is still an academic setting, just not with the professor's traditional duties. Some people may just use it as a vacation but it's associated with more than that, see https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8557/what-is-an...
You can love something and want to dedicate your life to it and still need a break from it from time to time. Is that not normal?
The question you're posing about academia specifically is interesting because a I assume a conference would be at least somewhat work related and part of the experience in academia. This is very different from a sabbatical where presumably you do whatever you want that's not related to your work. However maybe it is? Maybe some people in academia use their sabbaticals to write essays or books or whatever?
This seems like a weird question tbh.
However, I personally experienced during Covid that online events can be the second best thing and they would be much better in terms of the CO2 footprint. That's something to think about and in the future more events will be hybrid for sure. However, online events cannot replace conferences. The reasons are the same as in business, I guess, first it's way more likely someone records you without your consent online (and it's also hard to decline when you're asked), and second, there is no good way to chat to specific people afterwards.
As for sabbaticals, I don't get them as a postdoc but they can be extremely helpful for writing books. Professors are often bogged down with administrative burdens and teaching, and the purpose of a sabbatical is to free them to allow them to sit back and think about foundational issues. Funding for senior research fellowships somewhere else while temporarily suspending teaching duties can be even better.