Taking a sabbatical in between jaunts has always felt necessary to me. This is my third - my last sabbatical was before I officially joined the work force and lasted fifteen months. I couldn’t imagine finishing grad school and immediately getting a job. I desparately needed a break to recover from grad school burn-out.
I left my 9-5 job in august to start an online business. People keep asking me what that business is, but I couldn’t tell you. Not because it’s a secret, but because I’m in metamorphosis. A sabbatical is a pupa in the deep sleep of winter - there is a level of sifting, shuffling, and discarding that happens in the stillness underneath the surface. The butterfly will emerge, but if you force it open, you’ll be left with goop.
I told myself I wouldn’t do any work for the first two months of my sabbatical. That became three going on four months. I’m starting to feel the pressure, good pressure. The kind of pressure butterfly wings need to break open a chrysalis. With this stillness to bridge the transition from a 9-5 to entrepreneurship, I’ve had time to reimagine my entire life as creative work. “How does one live a quality life?”
It’s the question of the decade.
In David Bayles and Ted Orland’s book, Art & Fear, the authors observe at the end of their pottery class experiment that ultimately aiming for perfectionism leads to paralysis, but aiming for work quantity leads to work quality. The students who made the most pottery pieces, improved in quality the fastest.
I think about this lesson in terms of designing a life. Assuming the same results apply when quality emerges from quality, does a quality result from living more life? If so, how does one live more life? Is it just doing more things? Bah! But it’s so easy to get caught up in the cycle of doing more. I’ve been there too many times - caught in the metaphorical pottery wheel throwing crappy mug after crappy mug.
I guess it goes back to defining what “quality” is for one’s life. It’s so subjective. Does the potter stop to ask themself, “What if I never wanted to do frikken pottery in the first place?”
Before I sit down and trust in the process of numbers, I ask myself:
Do I really want to start an online business?
I do. At least, I think I do. And so I’m sifting, shuffling, and discarding all the false beliefs, habits, and identities that say I can’t. So here I am enjoying the goopiness of my sabbatical.
Update log: The answer to “Do I really want to start an online business?” was always “Yes.” But the question underneath the surface was actually, “Do I want to go back to working in healthcare?” That answer deserves its own post.
Wow, this is such an interesting point of view: I too want to turn quantity into quality. I want to add the fun element into it too. If I can turn it into a joyful and playful activity, then I'm also more likely to do it more often. Looking forward to brainstorming mañana!
Love having a window into your process! One thing to remember about the potters who produced lots of pottery: they LOVE making pottery. The thing that enables them to push forward this way is passion. So keep watching for passion (vs healthcare system aversion) as you experiment and play.