This blog post never made it out, and am publishing it only 188 days late 😂

According to my calendar I’m in day 146 of my Sabbatical. Time to count my blessings.

Let’s start with some numbers:

• Married one, the love of my life ❤️
• Had one son, S 🥂
• Raised four chickens and a few days ago we marked our 250th egg 🍳
• Brewed four batches of beer 🍻
• Harvested one batch of Kale, and am about to harvest the first batches of Carrots, Cabbage, Broccoli Sprouts and Spinach. Strawberries and Lettuce have just been planted 👨‍🌾
• 14 different crypto coins traded, riding the roller coaster, or bubble if you will, that is crypto currencies 💸
• Followed two courses at Coursera; Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies [1] and Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies [2] 💰
• Collaborated with one, my favorite, charity Library for All [3] as a volunteer 💖
• One non profit startup slash Open Source project called vol.community [4] see the prototype at and start contributing at the Github project page [5] if you are able to donate a little time. 👨‍💻
• Attended one conference and joined 44 local Meetup groups 👋

What is going well

Communication and agreement on time spent

Before starting the sabbatical I took some time and effort to convince my wife that the goal is to have time to explore new things, house keeper not being one of them. That sounds terrible. But me defend myself; I do cook a few evenings a week, I do bring the kids to school daily, help out with cleaning and change as many nappies as humanly possible.

But I also claim hours of alone time every day, exploring whatever it is I’m working on. I’m happy I have spend some time clarifying and defending this before hand, and imagine this is much harder when you have to manage expectations during your sabbatical.

Creation of a dedicated space

I’ve converted the shed into an office space, including a standing desk, a sweet 30 inch screen that I grew accustomed to while being spoiled at Atlassian and two white boards. It provides a natural barrier between the house with all the hustle and bustle that comes with a family of 5. The fact that I need to turn the intercom on to hear baby S stirring in his room, and that A or the other kids need to walk across the garden makes all the difference. It ads just enough friction to actually enjoy some productivity.

At the same time it’s close enough to spend time with the kids in morning and afternoons. Share lunches, go for a walk or prepare dinner without having to leave early. And being available whenever A needs help during the day.

Having lots of time to be with your kids

I have a few hours every morning spent getting S out bed, dress, feed and play with him, together with L and F, and walk L to school.

It’s fantastic to be able to see the kids many time a day instead of a rushed morning before heading out to work and a short evening after. I can’t imagine how many first moments you’d miss being away from home each day!

Spending time to be with my wife

After taking care of the kids, I make A a coffee before I head to the shed. On Wednesdays we have a nice lunch date together, and take plenty of walks at the beach.

What could be better

Distractions

Having a baby certainly is a tad distracting… A good amount of focus, time and energy is absorbed by the firstborn. At the same time, it is amazing to be able to has this much stress free time with room for improvisation.

Isolation

At times it’s hard not being able to bounce ideas at other people with a simlar skillset. White boards help, so does having regular catch up meetings with peers over video calls. Going to local meetups and conferences helps to connect with locals of all walks of life, and can be inspiring.

Blogging

This is only my second blog post. I planned a much higher frequency of updates, shame on me! 🤷‍♂️

The future

I’m excited to push Vol.community to beta this week, and start launching a few startup ideas. There is a short list of things I’d like to build that would work on the same technology stack, and it would be a shame to not put the knowledge and code gained to use.

In regards to deepening and expanding knowledge, I’m about to study and experiment with statistics and machine learning with my good friend Damien [6].

Getting more involved with IOT, there are some exciting projects that I’ve started to collaborate on.

And last but not least, my first full grain brew, most likely a Belgian style strong ale 🍺

References

• [1] Coursera: Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies
• [2] Coursera: Data Manipulation at Scale: Systems and Algorithms
• [3] Library for All
• [4] Vol.community
• [5] Vol.community project page
• [6] Damien Klinnert’s blog.