Today is the first day of an eight week long unpaid leave from work, or as I will refer to it: sabbatical. Other people may call it mini-retirement; for example, Tim Ferris says: why take all of your retirement at the end of your life, when instead, you could take mini-retirements throughout your life.

Why?

For fun.

And because I can.

I am switching teams at work and if I am going to take time off, the best time to do it is between switching teams. Think of it as taking time off between jobs. In 2013 I took a three month long unpaid leave to travel around the world and it was such a blast with so many benefits, that it was no-brainer to do one now as well. I am very grateful and privileged that my company allows us to take months of unpaid time off.

The plan.. or rather, no plan

My previous sabbatical was very carefully planned three month long around-the-world trip.

This time, I have nothing planned out! Things were very busy at work, so didn’t have time to plan anything.

But that’s OK. I have always had more ideas for things, projects, and places to do than the available time so I am sure I won’t be bored.

The first stop: recharging

In the first week of my sabbatical I will attempt to “do nothing”.

Several people have asked me whether I ever do nothing. I am not sure what in other people’s minds is the definition of that. For me it is definitely NOT watching TV all day long (though documentaries or TED talks probably don’t qualify as “TV” even though I might watch them on a TV screen instead of a computer monitor).

For now I think for me “doing nothing” means having no commitments to others or  anything, ie. no appointments and no to-do lists, and instead allowing myself to do what I feel like doing. I will elaborate more on it later once I will actually have experienced it.

February 6, 2017 @ home in San Francisco