Reflections on Sabbatical
I’ve been on a personal sabbatical for the past 10 months. Throughout this time, I often received the question: “what have you been doing with your time?”. I’ve been fortunate to have plenty of time for rest, renewal, and reflection. As I prepare for a new role, I wanted to share some of what I’ve been up to.
Taking time to recover my health
In 2021 and 2022, I struggled with strange health symptoms and more medical appointments than I care to remember. My colleagues at Microsoft were incredibly supportive as I tried to balance work and health, but at the end of the day, it was hard to perform my best at work while managing symptoms and medications. Sabbatical gave me an opportunity to focus fully on finding the habits and medications that work best for me, without worrying about interference with work. I’m leaving this period with a better understanding of what habits I need to feel my best.
Helping neighbors in need
For 7 months of my sabbatical, I led volunteers as we prepared meals to distribute to unhoused neighbors via an organization called Aurora Commons. I was lucky to have access to a large commercial kitchen to prepare 100 servings of burritos, sandwiches, or soup each week. Each week I altered the menu to incorporate ingredients donated from local businesses. I got so much fulfillment from this work: there was a joy in preparing food with the other volunteers, and I extended my comfort zone in distributing meals and spending time with unhoused neighbors in my community. It’s one thing to read about issues like addiction and housing instability; it’s another thing to spend an afternoon with folks who live on the street due to these issues. I’m so grateful for the chance to spend time with neighbors of all walks of life and create a positive impact within my community.
Clarifying priorities in my career
When I chose to take a break from work, I was feeling drained. I wanted to identify which parts of my career were “filling my cup” and which were “draining my cup”, so I could rebalance that work in the future. I had dozens of coffee chats with professionals in several fields, and enjoyed reading books about career, especially What Color Is Your Parachute. Emerging from this reflection, I’m focused on connecting with product users — it’s the sparkle that makes product work worth it. That steers me towards a career in UX Research or product management in a small company environment.
Exploring new projects — and realizing they weren’t my calling
As I explored which types of work I find fulfilling, I found myself wanting to create experiences and products for friends and family. My architecture tours grew out of a desire to show friends some of the interesting architecture I had seen while roaming the city — but after beginning to grow the tours and explore the liabilities of leading a bike ride for customers, I realized that architecture tours needed to stay a hobby.
Similarly, I’ve always loved handcrafted garments and equipment, and I borrowed a friend’s sewing machine to explore the possibility of making bags and apparel to sell. Though I found a lot of joy in crafting items for my personal use, I knew that the pace of manufacturing and price appetite meant I would have a hard time making a living from this work. Once again, I discovered that an interest of mine was a hobby and not a career path.
Reading, reading, reading
One passion that blossomed during this time is my love of learning, further enabled by the Seattle Public Library and their Kindle app. I devoured at least one book a week, mostly non-fiction, on many historical and scientific topics. My favorite book was The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson. The book details a cholera outbreak in Victorian London and shows the importance of data visualization for solving problems.
Learning new skills
In the second half of my sabbatical, I reached clarity in my career goals around UX Research. I dove into projects and online learning to build skills and experience in this type of work. In July, I completed a bootcamp through Memorisely and enjoyed working with a partner to research how users of the Kitchen Stories app find and save recipes. The bootcamp gave me so much exposure to the breadth of UX Research methodologies and I was grateful for the chance to practice qual/quant and generative/evaluative methods.
When bootcamp was done, I continued my learning through self-paced Figma tutorials. I designed flyers and postcards to raise awareness for a local community fund, and I designed a poster in the style of something I had seen in a National Park, detailing iconic locations in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
