A perk of working at Automattic is that each employee is offered a 2-3 month sabbatical every 5 years, giving us all a chance to step back from the daily grind and recharge. This summer I was fortunate enough to take this time off, allowing me to focus on my family and myself. There have been some beautiful highlights during this time which I want to share, also allowing me to reflect back on. 

I feel I have grown as a person, as a mum, as an adult and feel at peace with where I am in my life right now. 

My sabbatical started during the kids summer holidays, so we wanted to get in some good family holidays. As my kids are still small, flying over the pond for them to be grumpy by the amount of walking there is in New York, didn’t feel like the best option in the end. So we stayed local and had two weeks in a small white village near Ronda, southern Spain. We had day trips to Ronda, family gatherings, lots of pool time and even my sister was able to join us for a few days. 

We then had a week at home, when I planned to get out to the beach with the kids each day, but with the hot Spanish summer, and the fact that my two boys are lazy sausages and love to play at home, we only made it out one day to the beach. 

Next stop was a few days in Huelva, where we visited replicas of the ships used by Christofer Columbus on his voyage to discover America. The best bit was a day at the water park, and my 6 year old who convinced me to go down the Kamikaze, his words were, ‘Mum, you won’t die, it’ll be fine’. I ended up going down multiple times, it was petrifying, but great fun! 

September was a month of transitions, my youngest started ‘Infantil’, with a two week adaptation period and my eldest started ‘Primary’ school. Both had a great start to the school year… oh they grow up so fast! 

With the kids back at school, my mornings opened up and I could look to focus on myself and my personal goals for my sabbatical. One of my big goals during my sabbatical was to lose weight and during September and October this was my focus. Creating healthy eating habits, and trying out different fitness routines, including working out at home, signing up to the gym and running. There were days when I worked out and could barely move the rest of the days, mornings when I dragged myself to the gym to feel utterly self-conscious and very few rest days. While it is possible to focus on becoming fitter while working, having the time for workouts and recovery without the need to drag myself to sit at my desk was amazing. 

While creating consistent habits, listening to my body, and generally becoming more mindful about habits, I was able to lose 5kgs in two months. As I return to work, I’ll continue to dedicate time on keeping these habits, working to be centered and bringing my best self to work. 

I also read a total of 9 books during my sabbatical, a good dent towards my reading goal of 2024, which is a total of 22 books this year. 

Check out and follow me on Goodreads. 

With my love of reading, I have increasingly been interested in writing my own novel, so during my sabbatical I signed up for a writing course. While the course was great, I struggled being sat in front of the computer. I do this all day when I am at work, so I found it hard to prioritize being on the computer, when I could be out and about. Nevertheless, the writing course is still something I want to complete and want to continue plotting creative ideas for my own book. 

I had a lot of fun family time with my kids, during these three months, and this helped our special bond. I also was able to see my sister more, and each week, I took a day out to visit her. She is currently doing up her flat, so each week we had new tasks to complete to keep us busy. There was lots of laughter, some tears shed, and it was great to see the progress on her place during this time. 

If you don’t know what to pursue in life right now.
Pursue yourself.
Pursue becoming the healthiest, happiest, most healed, most present, most confident version of yourself.
Then, the right path will reveal itself.

I feel I have pursued myself during my sabbatical, spending time on me, and growing as a person. I have created stronger relationships with my family, created better habits for myself to be centered and have taken the time to understand what I want to continue to pursue in life. The time away from work has allowed me to do this, and I am truly grateful for this opportunity.