So, yesterday I stopped for sabbatical number five.
This is the time of year where I’ve now (five times) taken a long period off work to try to decompress and slow down.
It polarizes opinion this does, especially if I write about it.
Some people seem pleased and happy and interested to what happens, and some people get really annoyed, such as the way of the world.
It was interesting today as I read Seth Godin's blog where he talked about changing gears.
He suggested in the blog that if you continue to rev a car over time without changing gears, then you'll blow the engine but in order to change gear, you actually have to take a moment to have no forward motion because you disengaged the gear to change it. That's what the Sab is for.
I think during this one I'll keep the blog going and in previous ones I've stopped and started it or not done it at all, but I think for me and for anyone else who's interested, I'll tell a little bit of the story about what happens.
I spent today in my little shed out the back with lots of bits of paper and post-it notes and devices open as I just tried to bring together all the madness that's been created over the past, I guess, three years.
Last year I did have the sabbatical for the first time in three years after building the practice and trying to keep the business afloat through Covid, but it didn't really work out the way I wanted, especially as I had a trip to Tenerife on my bike and then returned with Covid and then tanked towards hypothyroidism in March.
And so, today I answered all my emails and the out of office goes on and I got to all my lists and rationalised them and brought them down into the smallest amount of lists and tidied up all the bits of rubbish around the edges that I've needed to do for ages so that I can start (when I feel like it) coming out here and thinking about things that I want to think about and writing about things that I want to write about and doing things that make a difference.
This will be interspersed by a little family holiday just after Christmas and then I won't be back to any sort of meaningful work until February the 6th.
I'm going to take the opportunity to try to support people in my family better than I usually do.
I'm going to try to cook a bit.
I'm going to get fit.
I'm going to try and lose some weight and I'm going to try and clean out my head and dust it all down for the battles that are to come.
And so, I'll see you on the other side, but you'll still get this stuff posted here, it’s just there won't be many replies going on because I will just post what I'm doing and what I'm thinking as the diary to myself, that I'll be able to read in the ultimate sabbatical when I finally finish work 34 years from now.
Blog Post Number - 3302