Voice of the DBA

Tag: sabbatical

  • A Six Week Break

    Today is my last day of work for six weeks. I start my sabbatical Monday, or maybe this afternoon, and will be gone. I may or may not blog, but I’m planning on being a bit unwired, so don’t expect anything. Certainly no technical posts.

    I am mostly planning on taking a break from all my normal life, with no big plans. My wife and I are planning to get away for a few weeks, but beyond that I’m likely enjoying summer on the ranch without a schedule to follow.

    Enjoy your summer and see you in August.

  • The Third Sabbatical

    I can’t believe I’ve been at Redgate long enough to get a third sabbatical. I’ve very lucky to have this job, still enjoy it, and get the benefit. I’ve scheduled it from Jun 30 – Aug 8, and I’ll be gone from work during that time.

    The idea of the sabbatical is to get away from work and recharge. It’s an extended break, and while some people use this to further their career in some way, others just try to get away from their daily life.

    I wrote about a bunch of projects I had during my first one. The second one was less planned, but I also had a quick review of the time away.

    For this one, I have no great plans right now. In fact, life has been so busy this year, I haven’t even had time to think about what to do, but I didn’t want to delay things, so this was the best time to take it.

    I started this post to get me to at least lightly focus on the time and what the possibilities could be. For now, I have a few things to do:

    • Work with a contractor to replace the covering on our riding arena
    • Rebuild a better generator house and re-wire a circuit
    • Replace some damaged fencing
    • Rebuild 2 horse feeders
    • Organize the garage a bit more

  • A Third Break

    One of the most amazing benefits of working at Redgate Software is the ability to take a sabbatical every five years. One of our staff wrote about this recently, and I found myself reflecting back on mine, as well as thinking forward.

    The article notes that many people either learn or travel during theirs. That was somewhat of my experience, where I spent my first one learning skills and volunteering at home. My one-year look back is still interesting to revisit today. Unfortunately, my flagpole base failed in strong winds (sad face) and broke the pole. It’s still on my list to rebuild a new one. I still look back on my volunteer time with fondness and try to get back to Habitat every year.

    My second was avoiding travel, since I’d traveled a lot the year before. I ended up with the last sabbatical before the pandemic, coming back to work as our office closed. I stayed home, worked on learning and projects, though I did take a trip to Las Vegas to celebrate my wife’s birthday.

    Six weeks away from work seems like a lot. Before Redgate, I’d have thought that this was a huge burden on the employer and fellow employees. However, we’ve had multiple people on sabbatical and we cope. We pick up the slack, and things continue to run. As with maternity (and paternity) leave, it’s not as big a burden as this American used to think.

    It is very refreshing, and each time I’ve felt rejuvenated. I’ve been ready to get back to work, talking with Redgate customers and speaking at events. To me, this is a great way to encourage retention among loyal employees, as well as a way that can create more diversity of thought among your employees. Where they travel, the things they learn, even the change of pace in their mind often bring them back to work with new perspectives and ideas.

    I just crossed my fifteenth year at Redgate, so I’m due for my third sabbatical. I haven’t thought about it, and I am not likely to take it this year. This does take some planning, both in my personal life and at work, so I have found I usually need 5-6 months to decide on something and get plans in place.

    What will I do this time? I’m not sure. What would you suggest? I am thinking to travel this time for part of the trip. My wife and I had an amazing travel time in 2022, and there are so many amazing places in the world that I’d like to visit. I am also tempted to try and fit in some learning as well, perhaps a week spent in some sort of educational endeavor.

    No matter what I decide, I am grateful for the opportunity and look forward to another break that helps my work-life balance, balanced.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • The Sabbatical Part Deux Review

    I just completed my second sabbatical break this week. Redgate Software is an amazing employer and we give employees a six week sabbatical every five years. I was overdo, and finally took mine in Jan/Feb of this year, with the third one coming up in 3 1/2 years. In any case, all the posts tagged Sabbatical and named “Part Deux” documented this break.

    I had written about my plan before starting the break. This time I wasn’t as structured as I was for the first one, but overall, I think things worked out well. I dropped a few thoughts in an editorial, but this post looks back at how I did with my initial plans.

    Guitar

    I think I did best here. I played most days, often for an hour or more. I watched a lot of YouTube videos, and even worked through parts of a few courses. I’d subscribed to GuitarJamz late last year and started building up some strength and calluses in my fingers. I worked through some exercises and learned some songs. I’ve followed Marty Schwartz on YouTube for years, and this was a good time to focus.

    I also discovered Six String Fingerpicking and started working through some of his all time top songs. I managed to work through the top ten, though I just barely know them. I’m not that good with all of them, but my wife did enjoy hearing me play. She thinks I improved quite a bit.

    This was a random assortment of songs, and I added a few more in there. What I think I did well was learn these things at a competent, not performing, level:

    • Blackbird
    • True Colors
    • Everybody Hurts
    • Wonderful Tonight
    • Ain’t No Sunshine
    • Wherever You Will Go
    • Every Breath You Take
    • 12 Bar Blues progression

    I lightly knew these songs, but I improved quite a bit and learned a few things I had been playing wrong/poorly:

    • More Than Words
    • Fast Car
    • Landslide
    • House of the Rising Sun
    • Good Riddance
    • Iris
    • Hey There Delilah
    • Hallelujah
    • Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
    • I Walk the Line
    • Strong Enough
    • All My Loving
    • With a Little Help From My Friends

    Lots of improvement here, and a good hobby I’ve enjoyed. Looking forward to taking this further in the future.

    The Basement

    I had hoped to not only clean the basement, but rework some framing and perhaps drywall a bit. The reality is that I underestimated the amount of junk and how quickly I’d fill our dumpster. It’s only emptied every other week and with the weather being poor, it wasn’t a good time to try and get a larger container.

    I did clean out about half of it and organized things. I also managed to donate three or four carloads of things to Goodwill and the library. A vast improvement, but not what I wanted. The existing framing was in worse shape than I thought, so I didn’t tackle any of that. Ultimately, I pivoted a bit on this.

    The Garage

    The same thing here as the basement, though this was more weather related. I had hoped to clean out and reorganize some of my workshop areas, but this was a big project and I didn’t have good space to work when the weather was bad. Between cars, my son’s motorcycle and a riding mower, I couldn’t get going. When I was ready, it was freezing in there, so I abandoned most of this.

    A failure, a bit, in my mind.

    Barn Projects

    One of the things I didn’t plan was barn/ranch projects for my wife. However, I did get a few things done here. I repaired a few of the feeders that I’ve built over the years and I managed to cover a building in metal.

    Perhaps the biggest project was getting an electric winch into the riding arena to raise and lower the door. We’ve done this manually for years, with a hand crank. Every one of us has climbed onto a barrel to lower this slightly, then go unhook the door, then come back and open the door. When we’re done, we reverse that, resulting in four barrel climbs every day or two.

    I replaced this with an electric winch and a remote, so there’s no need to climb, but also we can hook/unhook the door at the door without walking back and forth. My wife’s employees love this.

    I had to engineer a way to attach this winch to the frame, which was custom metalwork for me. I then had to wire this to a battery and add a solar panel to keep it charged.

    Attach7512_20200221_134709

    Across the last month, this has worked well and everyone appreciates it. I even pleased myself with my work at the end of the sabbatical, trying to get hay to horses. This was one thing I’m quite proud of.

    I also identified a few other repairs I need to make across the next couple months. These are things I’ve let go and not checked on. I wasn’t aware how bad things had gotten with all my travel, but now I know I need to focus on some side projects around work.

    Health and Illness

    I wanted to take care of myself during the break, hitting the gym, getting massages, and snowboarding. I ended up with these stats in six weeks:

    • 5 massages
    • 7 days snowboarding
    • 28 gym workouts

    Good progress. In 42 days, I had 35 workouts. Not fantastic, but good. The limiting factor in most of this was my health. I fought a cold for about 2 1/2 weeks, just struggling to get healthy. It only knocked my down in bed for a couple days, but I was moving slow.

    Overall, this wasn’t much better than I might have taken care of myself while at work, other than the massages. Those are hard to fit in. Not great progress, but a lot less stress.

    That might be the best part of this break. My stress and concern with getting things done, and having deadlines, was low. I still had coaching duties, and I kept fairly busy, but I could let things slide a bit if I needed to, like the garage.

    This was a fantastic break. After my first sabbatical, I wasn’t sure what to do the second time. Now I know I don’t necessarily need a plan, but the break will do me good.