For the next three month, I’m taking the first sabbatical in my life.
When I first heard that I can take a fully paid sabbatical every five years at Automattic, it was about a half year after coming back from my 3-month maternity leave. My sixth year started a couple month before then, but I didn’t feel like going away for an extended time again – even though the fact is that the company encourages us to take one.
Even when I seriously started thinking about the time off for this summer, I wasn’t 100% sure if this is going to be a good idea for me.
I like my work, and there are so many things I want to get done!
One of my teammates who shared some of the tasks with me is no longer around, maybe I should wait.
Won’t this create too much extra work for others in my team?
But now that I have passed over my work to Andrew who will be backing me up, I feel both relieved and ready.
From today, I’m taking a 10-day trip with my husband and daughter to Vienna. I will be speaking & volunteering at WCEU (that may sound like work but I’m doing that as just someone involved in the WordPress community 🙂 )
I plan on taking some more trips, reading books, organizing WordCamp Tokyo, and working on some other projects I have in mind.
Comments
2 responses to “Taking a Sabbatical”
Hi Naoko-san. Awesome that you can take a 3-month sabbatical. What an exciting opportunity. Enjoy.
When I was younger working as an engineer at Apple. I took a 2-month sabbatical, and traveled around in Asia. I spent 3 weeks in Japan, and fell in love with this place. That is why I am here now.
I hope similar opportunities await you.
Jeff
Hi Jeff! Thanks for sharing the story, I didn’t know that’s what triggered you to stay in Japan. We would have not met if it weren’t for the trip.
I do hope that my sabbatical is as life-changing as yours was.