30 days changed everything: My first Sabbatical
How 30 days off changed everything.
For the last month I have been on a sabbatical.
And to be clear, no, not burnt out.
No, my life and business weren’t falling apart.
No, I wasn’t having a breadown.
I feel this an important caveat as most people take breaks in this space as a reaction and not a choice.
I had planned this intentionally mid year to recover, to rest and to simply, not work.
I knew that by June I’d be pretty keen for a break, I run my signature program One of One for 4 months from Feb to June, alongside my alumni space and any other shenanigans I get up to and if you know me and how I work with my clients, it is in depth, up close and personal and high touch and so by the time June and July rolled around - ya girl was ready for a real good rest.
In this article, I want to break down a few things:
Just generally how I am, how the sabby was and a high level overview.
How I prepped for the sabbatical because I think this is where people have the most questions, how the fuck did I logistically and financially take a break?
The hard things that no one talks about when you take an extended period away from business.
My major take aways from my sabbatical because truthfully I feel like a new fucking person, everything is different: me, the business, what I want, why I’m doing all of this.
#1: So, how was it?
My sabbatical was fucking amazing.
In the lead up (I’d say a month out), there was a bit of wobbly-ness but as it got closer, I felt nothing but certainty that this is exactly what I wanted and needed.
I decided that I’d not only take a sabbatical from work but also completely sign off of all social media platforms as well. This was something that was, truthfully, really scary at first. I had so many stories about people forgetting me, losing momentum and my engagement going down after a huge season of growth (which to be clear of course it did lol) but as I checked in with my values - it was clear, I needed to log off.
And of course, this was the best decision I ever fucking made.
If you take a sabbatical please please fucking please log off of social media. Social media is our job and for me being online is work - that isn’t negative necessarily but if I am taking a sabbatical that includes social media. It was the best thing I could have done for myself, for my brain, for my creativity, for my sense of self. Just trust me.
As I eased into the first week, I thought there would be more resistance than there was but truthfully it was heaven. Divine. Bliss. Fucking easy.
What surprised me was how good nothingness felt. How good spending my morning cuddled on the couch with a book felt. How good no plan felt. How good no computer felt. I thought I would want to do all these dreamy things, I had so many ideas of how to spend my time but the truth is - just being was the best fucking medicine I could ever receive.
This time felt sacred which is why if you subscribed to my “sabbatical lite” email list you heard nothing. (sorry about that) I realized that I was so used to intellectualizing my experience, using my lived experience as leadership and as marketing material - that I didn’t want my sabbatical to be that, at least whilst I was on it. I didn’t want to have to think about my major themes just yet, my take aways, I didn’t even want to think about how I was feeling - I just wanted to be and as a coach, someone who writes and talks for a living, fuck me that was delicious.
My time was slow, unexciting in so many ways, I read more than I have in my entire life, I started writing my memoir, I went away with 15 friends, I baked a lot. And then with more time, the way I viewed the world started to shift, it didn’t come in an epiphany, it came subtlely and almost without even noticing but when you don’t work and everyone around you continues to work you can’t help but see the world and the system for what it is, a fucking joke.
Friends killing themselves for companies that sell beauty products. People working so hard and somehow still unable to feel financially safe enough to have babies or pursue their dreams or just get a good nights rest.
By half way through my sabbatical I started to feel hate, hate for the system. Hate for the way work has become the way in which we live our entire lives, the thing we center everything around, the thing most people can’t seem to stop talking about.
I was annoyed at it all. Late stage capitalism, billionaires and trillionaires, the state of the world. I hated how novel my time was, how I was the only person I knew who’s ever taken a sabbatical. I hated how radical it was to be well rested. I hated how crazy it was to live a life in service to your friends. I hated how novel having time to do nothing was.
This hate, this frustration has followed me into my current reality. It has changed the way I view everything, my business, the function of work, the life I want, how and why I want to coach business owners.
Everything has changed.
This sabbatical reminded me, well maybe introduced me for the first time to who I am without “work” and I really liked who I met. An author, a book worm, an artist, a great friend, a slow mover, a quiet mind, a much happier person.
I know I’m not allowed to say that - that I’m happier without work but I am. It doesn’t mean I don’t like doing what I do, I love my work but it is still work and I am okay with holding that tension.
