On Taking Sabbaticals

6FPS V4#7 - Photography and More
A Newsletter by Chuq Von Rospach
July 11, 2022

 

Welcome to the new issue of 6FPS.

It is July, and I’m trying to figure out why time is flying past so quickly. Here in the Pacific Northwest it’s been cool, damp and gloomy, although summer did arrive around July 1 (finally) with a few days of 80+ degree weather. After which it went back into a rainy pattern in the 60’s and 70’s. Perhaps those three days of heat was summer this year…

I’m only mildly complaining; if I wanted lots of heat, I would have stayed in California. But I sympathize with those around me who really wish for a more typical summer here.

I did get Laurie’s veggie garden in with her. This place had an area set aside for it with really nice soil (not the Santa Clara adobe), but to reduce the amount of work it needs over time, we are using raised cedar beds, which involved me bringing in about 45 bags of soil and filling them all up. But now the tomatoes are in (and we need some warmth to set fruit), along with herbs, peppers, squash and pumpkins. Our orchard trees, because of the weird weather, set poorly as well.

Working on that we found that parts of the irrigation system needed updating, and I’ve hired a crew and we’ve put a plan together. In the next couple of weeks they’ll show up for about 3 days of work replacing all of the low flow sprinkler systems, and we’re going to upgrade the systems out in the orchard area. Also, put the controllers on wifi so we can manage them remotely….

It’s always something…

Camera stuff

Last issue I noted that I’d updated my camera bag posting for the year, so of course, having just done that, I decided to pull the trigger and buy the Sony A7 VI. I talk about why in the piece linked. I will, as this settles down, update it again, of course.

Time Off

Laurie is taking a week off to head to Oregon for some R&R time, and, since I haven’t taken much PTO either, I decided to schedule time off that week, too, and I’ll be staying here at the house but able to day trip and putter and basically not have to worry about if something I do is going to mess up something Laurie has planned. And after scheduling that, I realized that the July 4 holiday schedule meant that I’d have a two day work week around the company holidays, so I scheduled those off, too. The end result is I’m taking about half of July off from work, but in two segments with a week of work in between. I considered taking that off, too, but there’s a project I’ll be finishing up that week to present to the company at the end of the month, and so the schedule actually works well for me as is. Plus, as I told my boss, I wondered if I would actually come back. With Laurie out of town, I can spend that week here at home taking care of the cats and birds but also treat it as a retreat in a way, allowing me to focus on things that can struggle for attention when all the day to day things are taking up so much time.

Sabbaticals and retreats are the subject of my essay below this month, and I recommend it to you, and I’m curious what your feelings are on the topic. Also, I mention the “R” word for the first time, which given that this month I’m turning 64, is another aspect of the self care spectrum we all should be paying more attention to.

Politics Alert

I consciously avoid politics in this newsletter, but do not mistake that for not having opinions, but instead trying to keep this monthly thing thinking positive and enjoyable.

But it’s sometimes been hard to avoid it since January 6, and the recent decisions by the Supreme Court have really upset and disappointed me. If I was 20 years younger, I would probably be finding ways to get active and out on the streets, but the body is not up to that kind of activism any more.

I will not beat my political drum in your direction here, other than to suggest that some serious crap is going down right now, and finding ways to contribute to the causes you care about should be on your mind. I have chosen to start donating to Planned Parenthood. I’m not requesting you do so, but I am suggesting you consider ways to support the causes you care about, whatever they are.

And as someone who really enjoys reading historical non-fiction and biography books, I’ve ready a fair bit about the Civil War here in the U.S., and about how the U.S. as we know it today came to be, and how fractured and fragile our country has always been, going back to the creation of the Constitution and the compromises around slavery made to those states to get them to agree to join in.

What I’m seeing today by the GOP in its attempt to roll back progressive changes in society and enforce a minority opinion rule on all of us feels very familiar in that context; what we’re seeing today looks very much like what happened in the years leading up to the Civil War. Are we really going to get to the point where take up arms against each other again?

To be blunt, the GOP position on gun control and the ongoing problems with mass shootings makes me feel one side already has.

It feels we’re very close to the point where, in the 60s, we started in on the mass protests against the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. It’s probably going to get worse — and more violent — before it gets better, but how far are they going to be and to push before the momentum pushes back in the progressive direction again?

I don’t know, and I hope it doesn’t get much worse than it is now, but I’m not exactly hopeful that we’ll see improvements soon. What I can say, given my reading of history over the years, is that the U.S. has always been a flawed but resilient beast, and somehow, over the last 200+ years, we’ve always figured out ways to make it work and move forward, and I see no reason to believe that this time, we won’t do so again.

The answers to that are going to come from the younger generations, though, not from me. So I’m going to continue to look for ways to encourage and support those who are directly trying to make a difference here.

And with that, see you next issue!

What's New from Chuq?

On Taking Sabbaticals

On May, long-time blogger Jason Kottke announced he was taking a sabbatical. He’s going to step away from his blog and his online presence for a few months to reset and recharge his batteries.

I can only say: good for him. I believe there are times in your life when you need to step back and figure out what’s next — and to get away from the grind that wears you down and give yourself a chance to rest and heal.

I did that in 2016, when I realized that I was running on fumes, and stepped away from a great role on a great team at Cisco. At the time, things were a bit crazy, with mom dying about six months earlier and the reality of being executor of her estate laying a layer of crazy on top of work. Years of attempting elder care for my parents where there were strong opinions on how things needed to be done also were a long-term drain on me, and I just woke up one day and realized I needed a break, or I would.

Fortunately — I could afford to, and Laurie was completely on board, so I gave notice at Cisco, handed over my badge, and… had no plan for what to do next. Which was the point, but honestly, also scary in its own way.

My original thought was I’d take 1-2 months off and then start job hunting again. In reality, it was over a year before I even thought about starting looking again, and I turned down everything that came my way during that time. I was simply worn out, and I realized I needed to give myself the time I needed to find my energy and enthusiasm again, and spend that time also figuring out what I wanted to do when I did rejoin the corporate world.

Along the way I spent a few months seriously developing an idea for a Youtube channel and writing a business plan on how to operate it, and then killing the idea about six weeks before launch when I ultimately realized it was (a) not really viable and (b) I loved the idea of building a Youtube channel, and hated the idea of actually running it — not the first time I’ve done this, to be honest, because I like figuring out how to create complex things, even if I don’t actually care about making it successful after I create it.

Ultimately I did start interviewing again, and I was in serious conversation with a company when folks from Farsight got in touch about a position we’d talked about months ago but they had deferred hiring until their revenue could fund it properly. I ended up hiring on to Farsight, and five years later here I am still happily plugging away at whatever things they need me to do. The other company (a non-profit fund management organization) I turned down? A few months later a massive scandal broke out in management about working conditions and various other things, a whole bunch of executives were forced out and I sat on the sideline watching the show as it shrank by a big amount and then slowly rebuilt itself; FWIW, it’s doing fine today from what I can tell, but I guessed right about which position was going to be better for me…

Kottke taking a break has caused a number of people to talk about adn consider their own sabbaticals. One of the better ones out there that I recommend to you is from David Sparks, of MacSparky, who this year retired his law practice to focus full time on his online content creation and podcasting.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball noted that you really should take a sabbatical before you realize you need it, and he’s absolutely right, and that’s not what I did in the least, of course. It’s also unrealistic for many folks both from a career and financial standpoint, but I think the concept needs to be more carefully considered, especially for people who run their own businesses where you never really can say you’re “off the clock”.

That’s the takeaway Sparks has from Kottke’s time off, and I think he’s on the right path that shorter breaks — really retreats instead of sabbaticals — make a lot of sense.

I’ve done that a number of times myself; when trying to sort out some complex issue or make some final decisions, I’ve gone off somewhere for a few days alone where I can unplug from everything including the daily home routine, break up all of the normal habits and familiar things that tend to reinforce existing habits, and push myself to focus on the gnarly thing until I’m happy with what I’ve come up with.

If you don’t wait until you’re exhausted or in crisis from impending burnout, a long weekend where you break up the routine and give yourself a few days with zero obligations beyond bathing and eating.

While Laurie and I enjoy traveling and doing things together, for many years we’ve also both taken time off to go off on solo trips. Covid has complicated this, but she’s going off soon for a week down in Oregon, and I’m looking at some days this fall where I go find a room on the Oregon or Washington coast, just me and the camera. While we have many (most) interests in common, this is one way for each of us to not have to convince the other to do something, and honestly, I have no interest in asking Laurie to put up with me setting a 4AM alarm for a dawn photo shoot.

The Sabbatical that never ends…

Which brings me to the “R” word. This month, July, is my birthday, and this year I turn 64. Beyond marking the beginning of a massive onslaught of advertising aimed at me over Medicare, seeing that number “65” peek over the horizon and wave has had me pondering when and how I’m going to choose to retire and stop working. It’s something Laurie and I have started discussing, and it’s what my boss and I have been chatting about as well (so this showing up here will not create any major surprises to them, I hope).

There are tired days when I think I’m about ready, but overall, it’s not time yet. My current guess (and only a guess) is earliest would be towards the end of the year, but more likely it might be this time next year. Turning 65 changes a number of financial realities and waiting for that makes sense to me, although one thing on my to do list for the next few months is to build out a formal budget to help understand how long the money in the bank will hold out — I have general ideas but a more detailed plan is needed for my comfort level. I also have some estate planning that needs to get done in the next few months, which I’ve been dreading digging into, of course.

There’s a bit of a trade off with this, of course. I am enjoying my work and my co-workers, and I’m in no hurry from separating from either. And the incoming paycheck is nice, too. On the flip side, more time for my birding, camera, shop and Laurie is attractive, as is, maybe, turning off the 7AM alarm permanently…

The one thing I feel I need to do in terms of starting the final Sabbatical is that it needs to start while I still give myself a number of years to enjoy it, and not late enough in life that I can no longer do the things I enjoy.

Which, I guess, is my suggestion to everyone reading this: self care matters, and burn out sucks. Look for ways to protect yourself from that latter, and sabbaticals (or long weekend retreats) is one way to help reset your life and recharge your batteries, and it’s much better and healthier for you long term if you start practicing this before you have to, or after you burn out.

And some day, you should be thinking about that sabbatical that never ends, and when and how you want to embrace that as well, because the one thing worse than working yourself into burn out is working yourself until they carry you out on your shield and bury you with honors.

Make sure you always give yourself time to take care of yourself.

Photo Wednesday/Feathery Friday

These are the images I posted since last issue to the blog for Photo Wednesday and Feathery Friday. To see all of these images at full size and read the stories behind their creation, you can visit:

For Your Consideration

Photography

Birds and Birding

Science and Technology

Interesting Stuff

Recommendations

This month, as I’ve been on a bit of a history binge again, a few recent book reads you might enjoy:

Mike Duncan’s The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution. This is an extremely well-written book by the host of the Revolutionspodcast, which is sadly just finished it’s great run. If you haven’t discovered that, go dig into the backlist and you’ll find a number of interesting looks at some key revolutions in the globe’s history, including Rome, Mexico and just finished (at 100+ episodes), the Russian revolution.

This book is a biography of the Marquis de Lafayette, one of the key players in the French Revolution, but also played a large part in the American revolution leading the French armies that helped and supported the colonists against the English. That is the reason there are so many places in teh U.S. today named Lafayette, but until this book, he seems to have been kind of forgotten. His is a personality larger than life in many ways, and Duncan does a great job of bringing him to life here.

Fred Emery’s Watergate: The Corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon is a very detailed and exhaustively researched discussion of this sad era of American politics. It is, in all honesty, a bit of a slog to get through at times because of the sheer amount of detail it has to cover. I found reading it while the January 6 commission proceedings were going on both enlightening and depressing, but it does give a nice set of parallels to what we see going on today; it should be remembered that Nixon didn’t resign his office until about halfway through his second term, so those of us annoyed things aren’t moving faster today need to realize these things grind slowly, but grind forward.

See you soon!

And with that, I'll see you in the next issue. I'd love feedback on this, what you like, what you want more of, what you want less of. And if you have something interesting you think I might want to talk about, please pass it along. Until then, take care, and have fun.

6FPS (Six Frames Per Second) is a newsletter of interesting things and commentary from Chuq Von Rospach (chuqvr@gmail.com).

Coming out monthly on the 2nd Monday of the month, I will place in your inbox a few things I hope will inform and delight you. There is too much mediocre, forgettable stuff attacking your eyeballs every day you're online; this is my little way to help you cut through the noise to some interesting things you might otherwise not find.

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