What happens AFTER the sabbatical?
So, there I was.
The last day of my sabbatical. I dropped my kids off at school, and promptly fell apart.
It was the first chunk of time I’ve ever taken off work since before college (we all know maternity leave doesn’t count).
In my head, the end of this period was going to come with new clarity, fresh energy, and the deep intention I needed for the next phase of my business. I’d planned for this time for nearly a year, and those were some of my goals.
I’d set aside earnings, run the numbers with my husband, wound down my client work, and dove headfirst into a creative project that was life changing for me.
The sabbatical was not easy. Anyone who has done it will probably tell you the same. You replace too-busy days with too-empty ones, you face hours upon hours of unstructured time challenging you to make use of it for big, hairy, uncertain things.
My sabbatical, in fact, WAS work. Just unpaid work. I went into it with an inkling, some content from 17 recordings I’d made, and a bunch of pieces of mediocre writing.
In the end, I shaped it up into a podcast – an audio documentary – which I had never done before. It was a grueling experience and an incredible one. I surprised myself and, honestly, most people I know by what I was capable of producing.
The end result feels like a love letter to my parents, and it’s the truest thing I’ve ever created.
So, I had not been sitting still. But, I was diverted, my brain working in a completely different way, and I could feel it changing me.
And so imagine my surprise when that last day comes and I sit down to evaluate where it’s all left me, tie it up in a nice bow so I can ‘get back to it’ on September 1, and here’s what I have:
Nothing.
It felt like 3 months of meandering left me with the need to do more… meandering.
I was furious at myself. I had foregone income, slowed the engine I spent 4 years building, and yet I felt like I was at risk of simply falling back into old habits. Resurrecting the business I’d had, instead of harnessing this singular moment to leapfrog forward.
I spoke to a few friends. One said:
“It seems you’ve been rewarded for going slow, not forcing things, in this past year. What if you keep giving things time to unfold?”
Another said:
“What if you don’t try to ‘consultify’ this podcast – don't turn it into some kind of revenue generator or offering. What if instead you just… keep creating. Keep writing. Keep slowly going. Follow it.”
In the end, I made the decision to sit back and take the pressure off. To avoid the rapid shift from sabbatical pace to ‘normal pace’ and leave some space for the unfolding of things.
It was then that I realized I needed to be as patient with the return from sabbatical as I had been in the middle of it. I made myself a promise to trust that I would be rewarded if I stopped forcing them.
And guess what?
Things started to unfold. I took on some projects. I made a few calls to get a little momentum going. But I didn’t force it. When people called, I said yes. But I blocked time to write when the impulse struck me.
I kept writing, too. I planned out season 2 of my podcast. I wrote more articles (like this one), saying exactly what I felt like saying. Posting what was on my mind. Not overthinking any of it.
And here’s where I find myself today:
More confident.
Trusting what's coming, after a long career (a lifetime, really) of forcing everything, willing things into being.
The work coming my way is delightful, surprising, and full of meaning.
The clients calling are exactly the kind of people I want to work with.
I am calmer. I’m far more peaceful.
I’m actually even better at my job. I help corporate women reclaim their identities – and I’m finding that I have more emotional and creative energy for it than I did before.
I have less clarity on where I’ll be a year from now, and more trust in what is to come than ever before.
Most of all, I feel this: Intense generosity.
It’s in my core, where there used to be a constant hum of low-level anxiety about not doing enough or possibilities of failure. It's this feeling of gratitude, appreciation, and love.
And it is spilling into every aspect of my life, relationships, self-care, and work.
I guess that by taking that bet on myself, by shutting down my business to virtually nothing, walking away from income (in a tenuous economic year, to boot), I proved my own self-worth to me.
I learned to believe in what happens when we go slow, and stop rushing.
To trust that good things come when we are truest to ourselves.
And it inspires me to want to prioritize meaning and impact more than ever before. So the answers have started to come, on their own time, and in unexpected ways.
I have just had to keep believing that, like with most things in life that are worthwhile, I can’t rush them.