Sabbatical Musings

So here I am on my last day of an 8-week sabbatical, an incredible opportunity (thank you MCE Social Capital !), and a very privileged one. I’ve had so many people ask me about my plans and activities- it even dawned on my 7-year-old son to ask me, about 5 weeks in, “Mom, what have you been doing?” Cue this blog- I wanted to share the answer to that question as a way to 1) encourage other companies to offer this life/mental health-altering benefit, 2) inspire other professional peers to take full advantage of it and 3) document what I did so I can look back on it later!?

I love my job at MCE Social Capital, AND my time away has been amazing. We are a relatively small nonprofit, and our salaries just can’t compete with those offered by bigger, particularly more mainstream financial service firms, but what we can offer are great benefits. A little over a year ago, we updated our leave policies, which included substantial improvements to our parental leave policies and the addition of a sabbatical option at the 5-year mark. In full transparency, I might have selfishly lobbied for this addition, but it was not hard given that our CEO Camilla Nestor had herself experienced a transformative sabbatical during her tenure at Grameen Foundation.?

When to take it? After deciding to avoid the summer period as I knew my sabbatical could get chipped away by family vacation and my lovely children’s irregular summer camp schedules, and after seriously considering a mid-March to mid-May approach, it turns out that the best timing for MCE/my team and myself was January and February, to start the year “late” vs. starting, stopping, and starting again. I worked the first quiet week of January to wrap things up and hand things off, then I put up my email OOO message, hid Slack on my phone, and silenced all notifications. My super-supportive team, including Christina Lukeman who bared the greatest burden in covering for me, and I agreed that the best way to reach me was via WhatsApp or text if they really needed me (which only happened twice!), allowing me to fully recharge and disconnect. I learned this during my maternity leave too but it was nice to be reminded- my/your company can and should survive without you if you are doing your job well, training others, documenting things/processes that are not helpful if only in your head, etc.

Biggest “aha moments”/reflections during my time away. If you have time, please feel free to read more details about how I prepared for and spent my time off further below, but I wanted to lead with a summary of my key reflections:

• I was reminded of who I am outside of my “work” and “mom” identities = priceless.?
• The mental clarity that I currently have from not having to constantly task switch during the day because of meetings, emails, other pings, etc., is amazing, and I think/know there are ways I can develop better habits/boundaries at work to give myself a better shot at elevated mental clarity more often. I stumbled upon the book Everyone Wants to Work Here by Maura Nevel Thomas while browsing at a bookstore and after reading the short book, I am determined to bring back some of my learnings to MCE re: synchronous vs. asynchronous communication hygiene/guidelines. I/we are knowledge workers, and allowing constant distractions undermines the critical time we need to “think”.?
• I could do things NOW versus adding tasks/ideas to my personal “to do'' list where things sit for weeks, months at times. . . That felt so good.?
• I really enjoyed being more present with my kids in the evenings and being a better listener for my husband Paul. I will silence my work notifications after 5:30pm moving forward. I can rest assured that my colleagues know how to reach me (via text) if something urgent comes up!
• Time to myself in the morning is so important. I need to continue to get up 30 minutes earlier to have a cup of coffee and start my day in a less “frazzled” manner. It sets a much better tone for the day.?
• I take in content and information so much better I’m moving/walking.?
• We/I need to continue to talk about mental health. I had two friends, one day after the other, share with me how my openness about my own mental health journey (two severe depressive episodes in my 20’s) helped them take steps to get the help they needed, and both are doing so much better now, which makes me so happy.?
• I’m not good and never have been good at sitting still and I’m ok with that ;)?

How did I prepare for my sabbatical? Ha, I work full-time and have two young children, so preparation was minimal at best. And other than two maternity leaves (which are not restorative breaks!) and three weeks off in between jobs in both 2010 and 2017, I have only taken a few days off for myself without traveling somewhere and/or without my kids at home, so needless to say, I was rusty when it came to planning activities for myself! As ideas came to me, I added them to a haphazard list on my phone that had everything from “clean my closet” to “take online classes on climate issues”. I then began to see a pattern which evolved into three core categories which formed the basis of the summary I submitted to our CEO of how I planned to spend my time and come back as an even better employee ;)?

How did I spend my time? Alas, how I spent my time largely fell into these three categories along with a few random ones and welcome surprises:

Focused on my health and wellness. Highlights here were that I:

• Kicked off my sabbatical with a 4-night health and wellness retreat at Hilton Head Health. I was in a beautiful location with about 50 other people, and one day for example, I had breakfast with two grandmothers from Tupelo Mississippi followed by TRX class, dance class, and then Hula Hoop. The second half of the day involved an afternoon walk to the beach, a salmon cooking class, and then dinner with several women older than me from across the country who had so much amazing life experience and advice to share! Such a good way to kick things off.?
• Ran errands via walking and biking and rediscovered my love of group fitness classes. I absolutely love to dance and took weekly hip hop classes with a close friend on Wednesdays (where I finally had the courage to move up from the back row this week!) and found that one of my favorite boxing studios (Rumble) from my SF days now has a location in Atlanta.?
• Rejoined our local gym to use the weight machines while my husband Paul performed theatrical jumps in the multi-purpose area. Feel free to ask me more about this experience and his antics.

Became a student again with a focus on climate issues. Highlights were:

• Stumbled upon this fantastic class offered by Columbia for only $50- Frontiers of Science- Climate & Us, which was an incredible primer for me on the causes of global warming and related climate feedback loops.?
• Invested time in researching and curating a podcast queue to listen to while walking, taking those brief trips in the car to drop off my kids places, etc. I avoided podcasts that were too theoretical/head in the clouds in favor of podcasts that shared tangible examples of the reality on the ground with a particular focus on farmers. Favorite listens were:
• Hot Farm. Four episodes and focus was traveling across the US Midwest, talking to farmers about what they are doing, or could be doing, to combat climate change.
• Hot Potato. Also only four episodes with a focus on regenerative agriculture through the lens of the potato, the third most consumed crop globally. I do love a good French fry. . .
• Climate Change is Driving Migration. Could Smarter Ag Help? This was a specific episode of How to Save a Planet that I found very informative. It focused on how climate change is driving immigration, and shared specific examples of how climate smart agriculture could help families stay on their land. I particularly enjoyed hearing about the work that Catholic Relief Services is doing on climate smart ag.

Spent time with friends and family:

• Coffee chats and walks with several close friends.
• Provided comic relief to (and likely thoroughly annoyed) my husband Paul Supawanich during his workday.?
• Very special trip with my mom and daughter to Charlotte to visit lots of extended family and some of my mom’s close childhood friends.?
• Magical (no, really) trip to Disney with my son Paxton. Avatar was our favorite ride by far, followed by Rise of the Resistance and Haunted Mansion (see below). And as someone prone to motion sickness, why in the world did I agree to go on Mission Space, which “uses a centrifuge that spins and tilts to simulate the speed and G-forces of a spacecraft launch and reentry”? Bad idea.???

Therapeutic purges and other unplanned highlights:?

• Helped my mom clean out the attic at my childhood home. Years’ worth of my science project displays, 75+ year mattresses, and 30-year old bug carcasses to name a few things. Daughter of the Year.??
• Tool concert with my husband Paul. I even found a way to dance to Tool’s complex rhythms. Paul was impressed.?
• Traveled to DC on my own for 36 hours to explore the Spy Museum and interview animals at the Zoo. Thank you Linda the ostrich for sharing your wisdom, and I hope you successfully found what you were looking for in your keeper’s pant pocket.?
• Rediscovered my deep affinity for Pema Ch?dr?n (love her wisdom, humor and voice- just one example is a great interview led by Oprah here) and the Tracy Chapman song “Fast Car” after she resurfaced via an incredible performance with Luke Combs at the Grammys. I have listened to the song over 50+ times to learn the lyrics and appreciate the story shared. MCE karaoke night, watch out.?
• Began working in earnest on plans for a construction project on family property in the NC mountains that involved many trips to home improvement stores and recent conversations regarding beekeeping and trout creek buffers. Happy to share more for those interested :)?
• Spent time re-engaging with my alma mater, Georgia Tech. I got set up with my alumni card, tried unsuccessfully to fit in with the students at the library, volunteered to review applicants for GT’s top merit-based scholarship, and took my son to play pool and shoot basketball and at the rec center, which he loved.?

What I didn’t do:

• I’ll be honest, I had planned to eat a lot healthier but that didn’t play out that well except for my health and wellness retreat where there was no sugar or alcohol on campus ;)
• I did not meditate (I do feel a little bad about this. . .), but I did take deep breaths a lot more often and took time to intentionally appreciate this “time” in my life.?

Wow, I am so sad for this time to end while at the same time excited to see so many of my colleagues next week in San Francisco for a series of meetings where I will be blissfully a bit out of the loop. I don’t know how else to close other than to reiterate that being offered and taking a sabbatical has been incredible.?Thanks again to MCE Social Capital for this amazing opportunity to rediscover myself outside of work.