Sabbatical Goals that Include More Work. I Am Excited.
I helped create a sabbatical benefit with the company I work for, and I am using the benefit mid-July through mid-October. I was the sixth hire and have been at the company almost nine years. Contributing to growing the business and devoting myself to learn as much as I could—customer experience, business development, coding, design, and so on—I put most of my mental and physical energy into the job. I love the work, the learning, the chance to collaborate with intelligent, empathetic, and creative teammates. I love the work, but I also love my personal life that I’ve neglected.
My company encourages vacation and time off—we’re a travel company, after all—but I can find it difficult to carve out time for life outside of work. No one at my job asks this of me. I love making things, and almost every day I can see how my projects help travelers and teammates. That drives me. However, my personal work, health, and relationships drive me too, and I want to invest more time in those going forward.
So I am taking a sabbatical from work to focus on personal interests and necessities. A big part of this will be concentrating on my health each day, as I have been dealing with chronic pain from various stresses for close to two years. I also plan to travel a little, heading to Scotland for a wedding, driving up to the Northwoods to see family, and potentially taking another short trip.
The other big part of the sabbatical will be for my personal projects. I will sit at my desk—or a desk or couch or log somewhere in the world—and make things most weekdays from 9–5, and I am excited. Mostly I’ll be writing, but I have a design idea or two I would like to explore. I am a week into the sabbatical, and I used that time to get a baseline for how much I can accomplish in three months. I set goals and timelines around what I learned, which I’ll share here to hold myself accountable. I’ll also post updates about progress and adjust the priorities as needed, since unexpected challenges or opportunities may pop up; I prefer not to be rigid, and mainly want to make things that I care about, and hopefully others will end up caring about them too.
Without further ado, my sabbatical goals in order of priority:
Finish L’ve novel manuscript edits and send to agents.
July 15 – September 15
Edit my picture book manuscript, Dream, Children, and send to agents.
July 15 – September 15
Research and likely launch a small lifestyle brand.
July 15 – September 15
Write the first draft of the next novel manuscript.
September 1 – September 30
Write a comic book script for the Top Cow Talent Hunt.
September 15 – October 15
Launch a newsletter for my website.
October 1 – October 15
Research and apply to writing grants for 2023.
October 1 – October 15
Write a picture manuscript for my friend to draw.
October 15 – October 30
Connect with writers on Twitter.
July 15 – weekly afterward
Continue sending stories already out in the wild.
September 1 – weekly afterward
Bonus, if time: either edit my middle grade novel manuscript or complete the Writer’s of the Future Fiction class and write a story to go with it.