Taking a sabbatical

The idea of taking a “mini-pension” sometime in life came years ago. I think it was from the initiative “Life in 500 days (Swedish)” by Gustaf Oscarsson. The original idea was to sometime in life take a longer time of from work an do what I would only be able to do when I was not working - but do it while I still have my health and energy.

About a year ago, I realized how I need I was of a longer break. As an entrepreneur I’ve never really gotten the breaks in between jobs or even had the opportunity to be really off for a longer summer vacation. So even the idea of making it happen was quite foreign.

But spring 2023 the opportunity presented itself for us to hire a CEO and for me that started the planning right away. I august the new CEO started, the 26th of December I flew to Peru and yesterday I finally closed down my work. And guess what? I didn’t even bring a computer to the trip.

So what’s the plan now? Well I don’t really have one.

Initially my plan was to go to Vietnam for a few weeks, then to New Zealand and rent a van to drive around to eventually land in Peru. But after talking to someone who had done a similar trip I decided to change the order of the route. Then after some more thinking I decided to leave it open. So the only think I booked was a plane ticket to Peru.

So here I am on a bench in Cusco without a plan for a few weeks, the only thing on the schedule is a trip to Iquitos for an ayahuasca ceremony later in January. After that it’s open again.

But I do have a few intentions for my trip. One of them is to not be on social media, thus along with posting this I’ll share a last post before deleting the apps for the time being. One of the reasons for this is to decrease my dopamine addiction.

Another intention is to find my way back to love and happiness with the light that comes with it. And to be clear: I’m not talking about a love from a relationship I’m talking about love in the same way as Humble the Poet as in I’m love (read the book)!

A few years ago I was at the Lx factory in Lisbon where I saw the message “until debt tear us apart” painted on the wall. That hit me hard and since then I’ve been making many choices to live a more free life. With that said I’ve been very locked into my work and have not managed to the same change there.

This trip is the opportunity to cut those chains and return to strengthen to a more healthy workload. Which will hopefully be more sustainable :D

Finally I hope to strengthen my intuition and find my truth apart from society’s expectations. Because even though I’m not the average joe when it comes to life style and work, I’ve become super aware this last year about how much the public opinion matters to me and how much it’s ruled my life.

So why this substack? Well I’ve been journaling for about a year, so I like writing and going back to my notes and I had quite a few friends and work colleagues who asked if they could follow me somewhere. So that’s here.

Now, Happy New Year! I’ll bet it’s going to be a roller coaster.