Find Your New Routine

Taking more than a month break from break sounds very interesting, rite?  But do you know one of worst things about it?  Depression!  You will get bored easily in the third week and may go into emptiness when entering second month if you think that taking sabbatical break means you will only sleep, eat and lazy around.  Oh well..beacuse life is much more than those activities :))

Finding new routine can be challenging especially if you don't really know your list of interests and things you wanna do before 50.  Even if those are as simple as renewal of driving license, get your new electronic ID, signing your apartment lease agreement etc.  One of those can be a very good start.  Do that in a relaxing speed.  So if in your 'normal life' one task should be finished within 3 hours that already include traveling to/from the point of task, now you can prepare a day to finish one task with additional nice things you can do before during and after that specific task.

These are some ideas that may be useful for you:
1) Do your errands related with legal matters.  Driving license, ID card, passport, bank account, checking your investment documents, can be interesting to be finalized.

2) Money matters - liquidating your investments.  As an employee in Indonesia, it is mandatory for us to have membership of government pension funds.  The cool thing about it is that you can liquidate your saving before you actually retire as long as your membership is already for at least 5 years.  There you go... another source of financial source to be liquidated to secure your sabbatical break.
  
3) Revisiting your passion (other than going to work).  It can be arts, craft making, writing, sports, you name it.  I aint no artist I even cannot draw straight line.  But I am good at following patterns, perhaps because I am an obedient person hahaha...  So instead of taking an art class, I decided to continue my batik making saga.  Yeah I want to make a batik skirt painted and colored by yours truly :))

4) Taking care of your health.  Go to have general check up and do all necessary follow up treatment.
5) Getting into your shape in glorious old days.  Yes yes.. go on diet and hit the gym.  Believe me it will consume lots of your time.

6) Traveling.  If you've secured funds to travel, this is the time to prepare and execute.  Challenge yourself to do solo travel!

7) Rekindle your connection with whomever or whatever interesting in life.  I am not a 'social' person who want to reconnect with friend in the past therefore I wont go to that direction hahaha...  What I do is spending more time to listen to people that I have in my life currently.  Oh it's interesting how far away their office issues are now with yourself.  Stay current to keep conversation alive with them though :)

Okay that is all for now..   Next time let's dig into the meaning of 'work' while taking sabbatical break.  Now let's get back to enjoying our life :)

-nana-

Hey It's the Second Month :))

Yep... I am living the second month of a sabbatical year.  Time flies?  Apparently..

So I already broke personal promise to write as much as possible about being in a sabbatical year.  Or as to my friend refer to: being unemployed :)  Therefore before proceeding to the story of second month, let me do flashback of Month-1.

As planned loooong ago, first month was the redemption period.  It was full of lounging, sleeping, wandering around, etc.  Basically that was a doing-nothing-month hahaha..  And my take to that? You need to master the art of doing nothing to be able to really enjoy it.

I had difficult time to adjust myself into a relax life schedule.  I remember to blame the office that it still tried to ask help here and there (they even asked me to travel one day to Bandung just to assist their field preparation on something).  And that bothersome.  But I think the problem is me and my state of mind.  If I get into sleeping problem because of anxiety and bad dreams about work and its demand, those are because of my inability to say NO.  I sometimes still felt that it is not right for me to ignore request about sharing responsibility of things I used to be part of.  Stupid eh? hahaha...

The thing is that I need to always remind myself that taking sabbatical year is my right and my choice.  It is also up to me to chose what crap I wanna do during this year.  No one is actually criticizing it and if there is one oh well..why bother hehehe...  How am I doing now?  Pretty good I guess :)

Okay now about the first days of Month-2.  I started to follow the plan to get myself back on health.  Yeah the general check up results is not so good that I have to take several different treatments and follow up checks.  Those sometimes contradict with my original plan to go back in shape because my hormonal treatment cause weight gain *sigh*

Anyhow...  A daily gym visit is in my schedule as well as eat healthier (kind of hahaha..).  I plan to succeed on (at least) 2 treatments and gym routine.  Crossing fingers I wont be lazy.  And you know what?  I just knew that going to gym at around 1 - 3 PM is heaven!!

So for now.. enjoy life, people :)    

Testing the Water - Makassar Short Break

I am taking 1.5 day break after 3 days business trip assisting an organization's capacity building for its local partners. So here I am in a super loud local bar listening to various music eg makassarese, manadonese, ambonese, and even  dangdut sang by a middle-aged man in black shirt :)

Of thinking about my coming sabbatical break, this scene may happen a lot in the future. Yeah.. I can dfinitely consider wandering around socializing with random people in random bar accross the world. Okay enough for now, let's enjoy a song about 'my widow' (cant be more bizzare than this hahaha..) with a good company. Oh well.. He's busy with his gadget :))

Why Oh Why...

The idea to take a serious break from my chaotic regular life had been haunting me since 4 years ago if i can remember correctly.  Yeah it's quite a long process and super slow, I know.  Of being me, it is difficult to have the idea of break sink in my head properly because work is me and i am work.

So after serious preparation, here I go counting my last month at the office heading into a full year of sabbatical leave hehehehe..

Am I ready?  Not sure that I am.  But decision had been made so I have to move forward :)

And why I start this blog?  

Writing has been a cure for my anxiety, it calms me down.  I find writing helps me make a good stop at any time I am about to do stupid act out of anger etc.  So it is natural for me to keep on writing whatever I want to write at any given time in my life.  I have another blog that has been in hibernation for 2 years thus blogging is not a strange concept and practice for me.  

This also helps me spend time when the actual sabbatical time comes.  Plus I am a little bit forgetful type of person.  This written thingy will help me remember things happen in life.

A FULL YEAR OF SABBATICAL LEAVE is a strange idea for me let alone for Indonesia *sigh*  But someone has to start something to save his/her life, rite? 

For now let's leave it this way and enjoy the ride :))