Chad's Sabbatical 2022
The thing about being a skeptic is that we want life to go according to our plans. We wish to know what will happen next. However, life is out of everyone’s control. Your cravings for certainty can derail you from experiencing life as is. And that is what made me decide to pull the trigger on the sabbatical GDC was offering me. It’s like this: Something like that is too good to be true. Once I had requested it, I started worrying about how my job would get done if I was gone for a whole month. Thankfully, with the help of Michele Brown, our COO, and some proper planning, something that turned out to be wonderful, began to materialize.
Our plan was to spend the first-week planning and packing (along with a garage sale). Then drive to Denver with Kristen’s kids to see Meow Wolf. In case you are wondering what that is, Meow Wolf is an arts and entertainment company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They create immersive and interactive experiences that are truly out of this world.
After the Meow Wolf experience, we decided to spend a week in Iceland camping and traipsing about, then fly back to Denver to spend a few days in the mountains and drive home. The last week would be for unpacking and relaxing.
We found inexpensive tickets to Iceland and immediately jumped on the opportunity. We followed the plan except for the camping. We camped one night in Iceland and found out the ground is literally lava rocks, and we also learned our tent was inadequate, to say the least.
So, Airbnb came to our rescue. We also rented a 4×4 so we could take the dirt roads and see things not all people get to see. It was an amazing experience and I recommend it to everyone, with very careful planning though. When planning a trip to Iceland, it is important to do the proper research before your trip. You will need to know some facts about Iceland, the best places to go, how much it’s going to cost, the ways to get around and the best rental cars to get, in case you want to do what we did.
In all honesty, I was most excited about getting to see my fiancé, Kristen, every day for an entire month. I don’t know if you knew this, but we live in different cities, so we really only get to see each other every weekend.
I learned that we could spend every day together and only want to kill each other 25% of the time. I’m kidding!
I felt ready but I knew it was going to be stressful catching up. I was anxious about that but in the end, it was fantastic, and I was worried more than I should have been.
So when planning your sabbatical, my advice is this: Take deep breaths. Go admire nature and drink margaritas until you are not thinking clearly and learn how to check out completely…trust me, the experience of being able to let go is something everyone, and I mean everyone, should be able to learn how to do.
Easier said than done.
