Is stepping off the "professional grid" (for a while) really such a good idea?

About a year ago I had just started the next chapter in my career. I was now working as a consultant for my own company; Dispersive Prism Management. The biggest change, in terms of how-to-live-my-life was still about to come, though.

After careful considerations me and my wife had decided to get a puppy dog. A decision that can, knowing what I know today, only can be outranked by deciding to have a baby. We went for the best (I’m not being biased at all) races of them all; a Border Terrier.

Around the time when it was time for me to end my first assignment it was time to bring the little puppy home. It was summer (Swedish summer, but still the same) and the holidays were coming up.

In Sweden, you get your puppy when it is roughly 2 months old (8 weeks to be more precise). If you’re planning to put the pup in dog daycare, the minimum age is 6-7 months. This gave me the opportunity to ”work” from home for 4-5 months.

Since most assignments aren’t dog friendly I spent this time catching up with the latest and greatest technology stacks, methodologies, programming languages etc. Whenever I got the chance, that is… Forget about remaining in the ”zone” for more than 10-20 minutes at a time.

However, I still managed to learn Rust, AWS/Lambda, Processing, programming (and soldering) MCU circuits, get an operating certificate in laser cutting, delve deeper into the field of Machine Learning (TensorFlow, Jupyter, data manipulation, creating classifiers etc.), write several pages of TLDR; texts on my company blog, creating a couple of POC games which I mainly shared with my friends, still building my professional network. Me and Bengt (as the dog is called) even went to a couple of interviews.

Career wise, stepping off the grid for this duration of time might not have been the smartest move, though. It tends to be when you’re currently assigned that you’re sought after. Doing something, except for having a kid, thus creating a hole in your CV might not be a good idea. For me, though, this short detour has taught me a lot. More importantly, I now have an additional (soon to be) 1 year old family member which continually continues to put a smile on my face.

Please, do not mind the gap in my CV! You do not forget how to ride a bicycle in 7 months. It just gives you time to come up with the next list of tricks to perform once you get the opportunity to hop onto it again.