I recently came up on 5 years of work with Automattic, which meant thinking about my sabbatical. Time away from work to recharge and realign. 90 consecutive days without the familiar barrage of notifications demanding to find their place among competing priorities. Peering over the edge now, I’m both excited and scared of what I might find by really letting that go for a while.
I was 12 years old the last time I spent a summer without work as my primary schedule commitment. At 13, my mom took a job working as a summer camp cook & we all had to live on-site. Being that I wasn’t the right age to attend most of the camps and was still too young to become a counsellor like my older brothers, I ended working in the kitchen 6 days per week helping out my mom by doing prep, washing dishes, and learning how to bake snacks in bulk.
I’m set to enjoy this slice of peace and unique opportunity until July 31 and have had it in my calendar for nearly 6 months, giving me a lot of lead up time to piece together a grand plan in my head on how to make the most of it. Here’s a rough outline of what having a cool time for 90 days looks like to me:
May – Visit home (Montreal), home improvement projects, woodworking, tattoo booked, start newest Zelda game
June – Wedding (+speech), camping, woodworking, be in the mountains
July – Japan honeymoon, camping, re-organize my office
For my general hopes? To read a few books, practice piano, & dedicate more time to being outdoors. To reconnect with myself through time away from my computer, which can easily make up the majority of a normal week in my world. I hope to learn how to let go of many little things that have accumulated in my daily digital life. I’d also like to balance that time unplugged with sharing a bit more than I tend to in the form of a blog. I hope you’ll consider following along.
Thanks for reading & may your day be a little easier from here.