It’s been over five years since I started, and I still find myself in “pinch me” territory when it comes to my job. Today is Day One of my three month sabbatical offered to all full time employees for every five years of service spent toiling in our technical world. Full salary and benefits and three months to pursue interests and regenerate. Pinch me, indeed!
The scheming and dreaming and planning for my time off began years ago. After all, it’s kind of a big deal, this perk. The global COVID-19 pandemic has changed our original dreams of an extended trip visiting family and exploring my ancestral home of Norway and that of my husband’s in Britain. My goal of experiencing the summer solstice in Norway, high above the Arctic circle, will have to wait.
Dialling back on travel plans several times to suit our shrinking world due to the pandemic has been hard. Thankfully, we are very fortunate to live in British Columbia, Canada, in an area that has no lack of outdoor adventures to fill our days. Our 6.5m (21’) touring kayak may not get her dose of Pacific Ocean salt water this year, but the 135km (84 mile) Okanagan Lake is worthy of more than the day paddles we’ve done to date. Numerous boat-access-only regional and provincial parks dot the shore and early planning is making us wonder why we hadn’t done a multi-day trip since moving to the area almost 14 years ago.
Three years ago I bought into the E-bike craze with a Rad Rover fat bike. A year later, Geoff followed suit, tired of chasing me and my (alleged) smugness. With many successful and enjoyable kilometres behind us, we’re planning some bike-packing trips. Within our region, there’s a plethora of trails and rail-trails to explore from easy day rides to multi-day rides. The hard part is in narrowing down which routes we want to do since I’d need more than three months to explore them all properly!
I’ve made a list. Okay, I’ve made several lists. A trip list of places within our region we want to explore and preferred mode of transportation. A list of projects, big and small, to complete on the farm. A list of projects to complete around the house. Some of the items are new and some have been on similar lists for years. The hard part is going to be balancing the quest to check these items off with learning how to find merit in actual downtime. Maybe I’ll find out what it’s like to actually sit outside and read a book for more than a rare few minutes at a time?
I’m planning on writing a post everyday. It might be just an image with a simple caption or I may drivel on as I have here. I may write but save the draft to publish at a later date. My plan to write daily is driven by good intentions only, so fingers crossed. The capturing of my good intentions will be done here, on a blog that’s been neglected for far too long, using WordPress, which is also the reason I have 89 days to spend as I wish. You see, I work for Automattic, the company behind the WordPress platform which powers 39.5% of all websites on the web. Thank you Automattic, I’ll do my best to make the most of my time off and further our quest to democratize publishing at the same time. See you back at work in 90 days!
Linda.blog 