May 10th was my last day at Shopify. June 10th I started my job at Equinix. This was the first time in my life where I didn’t work for a full month. The most time I’ve had off since I was 17 years old was two weeks. I felt really tired and decided to push a full month break between Shopify and Equinix.

After having the time off I feel really privileged. Most people work their entire life, they don’t complain about working, they realized its what they need to do. So I do feel a certain guilt in taking the time off, but still if I could take more time, I would.

The first two weeks I was very busy just trying to catch up on all the things that I needed to do to prepare for running the quad city sailing school and maintenance items around my home. The third week I traveled Wayzata Minnesota to attempt to become a US Sailing certified small boat instructor. After this I was sick for a few days. Then my final week off I taught sailing with the Quad City Sailing School.

The month went by quickly. I didn’t really get “more” done being off work. I think there’s two reasons for this. First my wife was mostly gone during this time to care for her father who had a lung transplant. The second reason is I think not having work removed some of the “urgency” at times so I was more likely to defer a task to later or the next day and spend more time lazying about.

Having the time off taught me I am I VERY busy person. Most of this busyness is self inflicted. I take on a lot of random tasks, projects and interests. I don’t like paying people to do things for me. This leads to having a lot “to do”. I think the number of my TODO tasks build up and I feel overwhelmed and exhausted. What I need to do is be better selective about what tasks I want to take on.

My biggest sore subject is the Lake Davenport Sailing Club. Involvement in the club has become a little over whelming and I’m not enjoying the time as much as I like and I’m finding it all to be a little bit of a burden. I need to back off a little bit and find a better balance. I don’t think I want to stop sailing, but I want to get more out of it for me.

One thing that surprised me about my time off is I spent almost no time on my computer doing “tech things”. I’m somewhat disappointed the my interest in technology has waned so much. I worry that its a bad sign for my career. Part of this could be the season, in the spring and summer I enjoy spending time outside, not on the computer. Time will tell with this.

All in all I really enjoyed my month off. I recommend that people who can afford to do something like this do so. I had a coworker at Shopify who took a full year off in his late twenty’s and said he’s never regretted it. I think I’m too old to do a full year, but maybe someday I’ll take the risk and go for it.