Thoughts on taking time out
When I handed my notice in during January, I knew that I had a 3 month notice to serve, and so decided that I would serve it in its entirety and then give myself some time off to study the "What next?" question.
I’m now 2 weeks in to that time out, and I'm enjoying having some time to work through some ideas, catch up with friends, visit exhibitions and basically, gather up inspiration.
During these first 2 weeks I've had a holiday, seen some exhibitions, read everything in my Instapaper backlog, started collating information relating to one of my ideas, written lots of blog posts - some of which are conclusions to things, others of which are just stepping stones along the way, but all of which are testament to me having the time to cogitate, work things out and react to them, rather than just ingest them.
From where I currently sit, the ability to quit, regroup and consider rationally the "but what next?" question, is very lucky. Several people have said they think it's brave, but it has never felt like I needed courage to do this. It has felt like the right thing, the sensible thing. How could I look for a job, whilst committing myself to the one I was doing? How can I guide and inspire a team whilst looking for my way out? One of my values is, and always has been, integrity, and this didn't feel like a very honest approach.
This time is important to me, has given me some head space, and as a result some of my answers to the "but, what next?" question have changed. So far I'm getting a lot out of it and I'm excited about what the next couple of weeks bring.