Seven sabbaticals have taken place since 2017, in all different forms, with all sorts of different trips and activities to realise at the end of them now.
What happened was that I changed over that time, even over the sabbatical, and I realised that I am completely institutionalised in the best possible way.
Many years ago, I read one of the blogs of Seth Godin (I can't remember which one), but he talked about how, while he was on holiday with his family, he might take an hour or two each day just to do a little bit of work on things he wanted to do.
One day, he was just working in the restaurant in his hotel, and two ladies were commenting loudly (deliberately so he could hear) about how terrible it was that someone might work while they were on holiday with their family.
He spoke to the ladies themselves and explained that his work wasn't separate from his life, it was just part of his life, and he loved his life when he wasn't at work, but also his life when he was at work so why wouldn't you do that on holiday as a 'holiday hobby' or something similar.
I've realised that I am entirely the same as that, and so while I struggled at the start of this 'time off' with the fact that I had all of this space and then didn't feel like I was using it valuably enough for the things I had to do; as seems to have always happened in these, I just settled into the way.
I think I've probably worked harder in this time off than I've ever worked in any of the times off, but when I say harder, I don't mean ticking off tasks; I mean thinking, considering, writing and creating and harnessing opportunities to make things even better in the place that I work which is already wonderful in my eyes.
From the very start of this one, Alison would laugh when people said, "Oh, Colin's off work". Alison calls it a clinical sabbatical. I don't see patients and don't really have to talk to anyone about patients, and so it removes one huge part of my life, one of the ones that I'm most emotionally attached to, one of the ones which causes me the most upset or concern and allows me to be much more abstract about running an organisation that treats thousands of patients.
During the sabbatical, I turned 53, and I know that I'm 53.
I'm not the same person as I was when I was 40 or 30; my energy levels are not the same as they were when I was in my 30s.
The drive to provide clinical work to put in the numbers of dental implants is just simply not there in the same way (I don't have to. Therefore, I don't want to), but it's different now.
My life has become about harnessing opportunities for anyone who is part of our extraordinary Campbell Clinic family and beyond passing those opportunities on to those people, and then watching them run, grow, thrive, and do amazing things.
I would never have dreamed of the fact that it could be so good to do this.
As a horrible, arrogant dick in my younger years, I would have wanted that all for myself, but it's gone now; it doesn't matter.
As just a tiny example, Beatriz sent me a message yesterday. The Campbell Academy had been invited to present a workshop at a grandstand global event somewhere in Europe, somewhere this year (it doesn't matter where or for who)
The invitation is unnamed, though; they just want one of us. Not Bea, not me, just someone from The Campbell Academy because the Campbell Academy isn't Campbell, is it? It's us, and I will continue to be a better version of us so long as I have the opportunity to work like this for as long as I can.
The sabbatical thing has been one of the most extraordinary things I've ever done, and I will continue to do it just long past the time (much to many people's relief) to stop talking about it.
Blog Post Number - 4064
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