Don’t read this

No, really, I’d prefer you don’t read this.

So why am I writing a blog that I don’t want anyone to read?  I guess I just want to write down what I’m experiencing during this remarkable time in my life. In fact, I’m compelled to write something down. I hadn’t intended to write during my break. “Are you going to write a book,” people asked me. “Nope,” I responded with certainty. A speech someday? Probably.

I like to speak and I always say yes if I’m available, but my typical speech about risk is a bit rusty. Though you could say that My Radical Sabbatical is actually the riskiest thing I’ve ever done, I need some new material.  So maybe this will all come together for a talk someday.

In the end, the main reason I’m writing all this down is that I’m positively compelled to. I’m a writer at heart and and my writing fingers are getting itchy. I can’t get things out of my head until I write them down, be them shopping lists OR people I want to reconnect with OR things I want to do next OR fun businesses I’d like to build.

I’ve seen so many new things and gained so many new perspectives during these last five months that I just need to get them out somewhere. So I’ll be dumping them into here, along with photos from my travels. If you’ve stumbled onto this, I don’t know how you got here, because you didn’t hear about this from me.

And if you’re reading this … Don’t

 

What’s this called, anyway?

A career break?

A Year of Yes?

Conscious career uncoupling?

There doesn’t seem to be a phrase for what I’ve been doing since Nov. 21, 2014, when I left my job as managing editor of the Chicago Tribune for a year of unfettered living.  It’s not exactly something most people do, can do or even want to do. And the looks on the faces of people who ask me what-exactly-I’m-doing range from horror to confusion to suspicion to envy.

My close friends, however, get knowing smiles on their faces. Because this sounds like something I’d do. I’ve always tended toward risky career moves, jobs seemingly over my head and roads less traveled. They also know that the crazy hamster wheel I’ve been on (for the last 13 years especially) isn’t actually sustainable for a human. I needed to step off at some point. I was lucky that I got to choose when I’d deplane. Not everybody does, and for that I’m grateful.

So the phrase I’ve settled on for now is My Radical Sabbatical. It’s a phrase that my friend, Alex White, came up with when I explained what I was doing. Leave it to a musician to come up with such a catchy phrase. So I use it a lot; it always gets a laugh.

It’s not a perfect description, of course. Usually, with a sabbatical, you eventually go back from whence you came. That won’t be happening in my case. I’ve left the Tribune, a place I worked for 25 years, and I couldn’t have asked for a better career there or a more positive departure.

I guess, in the end, I wanted to take a year of retirement early, when I’m young and healthy and can really enjoy it.

So far so good! This break has been exactly what I”d hoped. Full of adventure, spontaneity, learning and happiness– giddiness, if truth be told. It’s been so fabulous, that sometimes I call it my Radical Fab-batical. Maybe that’s what I’ll call it. …