Month: August 2007

For a couple of years now, I’ve been wishing I could just stop, take a break from everything and take a sabbatical year, and just do whatever I want to do in it.

When you come to think of it, it’s not really such a hard thing to do after all, I think that if you’ve got yourself financially covered for a year, meaning that you’ve managed to save what equals 12 of your paychecks, then you’re good to go and have yourself a year off from work and the everyday responsabilities you’ve had for the past years.

Ok, it’s not that easy to save all that money, but well with a good savings plan, it’s not that hard either; let’s just say you get there, then what? that’s the really big question!

You’ve got enough money to keep you going for a whole year, you don’t need to work at all, and you can, at least in theory, use your time to do whatever it is you want to do. But what is it that you want to do?

Over lunch these past days I’ve been asking some friends and colleagues from work what they’d do with their time if they had a whole year covered financially. I was expecting some really inspiring answers, but what I got back was more like blank unknowing replies.

I’m not any better, although this isn’t a question someone just threw on me while I’m chewing my lunch and thinking how great it’d be if the bug waiting for me at work would just decide to dissapear; This is something that I’ve thought about many times, but every single time I come up with a different answer.

Is it that we don’t know what we want to do with our lives?
Is it a lack of passion in us?
Is it that we’ve got so used to work that we don’t know what we’d do without it?
I don’t know, but I somehow think it’s a problem, because until we know what it is we want, we won’t know where we want to get to, how we’re going to get there, and whether we really want it or not.

So, try it, what would you do if you had a sabbatical year?
If you have an answer in your head right away, maybe that’s what you should be doing instead of whatever you’re doing in life now, and if you don’t know, then it’s about time you start thinking about what it is you want in life, and then base your goals and decisions around it.