Sabbatical Dad

Well, that’s it.  Done.  Party’s over.  Back to work.  And just as I was hitting my sabbatical stride. Although it was probably about time. To be honest, I’d kind of run out of fun things to do at -15C in the middle of January in the middle of a pandemic.  Six months has come and gone in the blink of an eye. Cliché, but true. It’s yet another difficult reminder of how fast life goes. 

I did use my last week to try to accomplish something new though.  I was feeling inspired by the latest audio book I’ve been “reading” (by David Goggins – Navy Seal, ultra-marathoner and general bad-ass…).  To be clear, by inspired, I mean made to feel like a weak and lazy waste of skin.  So, I took it as a bit of a challenge.  In a very small display of mind over matter, I went out jogging every day.  I’m happy to chase a soccer/tennis/basketball for hours, but I strongly dislike jogging just for the sake of jogging. Admittedly I’ve only been doing about 5km at a time, but now cumulatively in the month of January I’ve death-marched over 50km.  Still don’t love it, and I don’t think it’ll stick, but I do at least plan to knock off a 10k race before I move on. Hardly worthy of writing my own inspirational audio book about, but whatever…

Anyways, I’ve been continually putting off this day of reckoning where I now step back and look deep inside myself to figure out what I’ve learned and whether it was actually worth it.

For starters, I’m pleased with some of my personal health accomplishments. I’m now in the best shape of my life. I feel rested. I’m a happier and more patient person.  Less stressed.  I look good. That being said, I was hoping to see a reversal of the greying of my hair, or at least a slowing of that pace.  No luck. Turns out that wasn’t just because of work.  More because I’m just getting old(er).

I am disappointed that there were a couple of things on the list that I didn’t get to.  Hard to explain why.  Seemed like I had lots of time, but the days still somehow flew by.  For example, my guitar didn’t even make it out of its case.  And I didn’t do as much reading as I thought I might have, although I did knock off quite a few audio books while I drove, walked, ran or worked out, but it’s not quite the same.  I didn’t do any “real” writing of my own either.  Years ago, after reading the same crappy children’s books over and over again at nap-time, I was convinced that I could easily write and illustrate the next great “Goodnight Moon”.  But I’m just not in that toddler headspace anymore.  And lastly, while I’ve got a few great tattoo ideas ready to go, the recent pandemic restrictions have put the kibosh to that… for now.

The most important thing though, is that I keep the momentum going on the lifestyle changes I’ve made and don’t fall back into the same old ruts. A sabbatical is more than just an employment status, it’s a state of mind and a way of life (bumper sticker?!).  And I plan to keep on keeping on.

So, was it worth it?  Could I have just done everything I did during evenings and weekends and still collected a paycheck?  Maybe some of it, but I really needed the catalyst and the space to hit the reset button. Although I still cringe a bit when I think of the cost… But, you can’t put a price tag on all the extra time I got to spend with my “beautiful” family, and just as importantly, with myself!

However, it’s time to earn an honest living again.  And as I didn’t come up with any great insights or inspiration on other exciting career paths to explore, it’s back to “working for the man”.  A corporate stiff.  A suit.  I guess I’ve learned that’s who I am.  The bohemian life just isn’t for me… although I faked it pretty well there for the past few months with my artsy painting, homemade bread baking, meditative yoga and occasional cannabinoid medication…

All in all, best thing I’ve done in a very long time. But now on to the next chapter.  A little older and a whole lot wiser.

Ciao amici.

PS: Not sure how long this blog thing lasts out there in the interweb (probably only as long as I keep paying someone somewhere for this domain name), but hopefully if anyone ever does read this, if not mildly entertained they are at least slightly inspired to try the sabbatical dad life, if only for a little while…

Happy new year.  The general sentiment out there seems to be “good riddance to 2020” given the state of the world.  And I fully understand that.  But I have to say, from a strictly personal standpoint, it was actually one of the better ones I’ve had in quite a while… Lots of family time and personal growth. And a sabbatical is a pretty good way to navigate some of the headaches of a global pandemic, including avoiding the many pitfalls of “working from home” (I understand any number of compromising incidents can occur if you forget to mute your business Zoom meeting…).

Notwithstanding not being able to spend as much time as we would have liked with extended family, it was still a really good holiday season.  A bit of skiing, lots of eating, and excessive drinking.  Capped off by a homemade fireworks show to ring in the new year.  Incidentally, I now have a relationship with a good on-line pyrotechnics dealer if anyone is interested. 

I feel like I’ve gotten a bit of a head start on everyone else who, at this time of year, are (again) making resolutions to change their lives for the better.  More fitness, more sleep, better eating, self reflection, personal development, whatever, etc..  Been there and done that for the past 6 months.  In fact, now that I think about it, every day of sabbatical is a lot like New Years day, except with only about half the champagne.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) it’s back to work time in a few weeks. Time to start getting my head back into that mindset.  Don’t want to come back to work with a really big vacation hang-over. You know what I mean. Its tough enough after 6 days away, let alone 6 months. And as you can see by the tardiness and decreasing frequency in my posts, bad habits like procrastination may have set in.  Or maybe I’m just losing my mojo for these posts because no one but my mother in law reads them anymore.  In any event, I guess I’ve made it this far with the blog, so should probably see it out.

On an unrelated note, I thought the daily UPS deliveries to my front door would have slowed down after Christmas, but somehow that just doesn’t seem to be the case…

Dec 20: Started Christmas shopping this week. 

Never gotten such an early jump on this, thanks to the sabbatical…!

Off to the mall again now, with all the other dads.

Happy holidays everyone!

At the start of this sabbatical I had hoped to do a little bit of world travelling.  Nothing like a good walkabout to gain perspective on life and find greater meaning. While COVID restrictions have unfortunately, but understandably, limited global travel, the good old US of A was still open for business for a carefully planned and socially distanced getaway.  So I packed my bag, got on a plane to San Francisco, and rented a car to embark on a 2,000 km one man road-trip around California to see what I could see.  Safely.

I should also note that I decided to make it a full “left”-coast liberal experience, as I had the Obama audio book downloaded to serve as the soundtrack to the journey.

The week-long agenda was designed to cover a lot of ground and knock off several bucket list items.  I think it was also subconsciously a prospecting trip to scout out potential retirement locations for down the road…

Day 1: San Francisco

• First stop, a quick visit to Stanford University in Palo Alto. Great campus.  I might have been a bit presumptuous to have tried to book my daughter a room in residence for 2026…
• Alcatraz island prison tour was kind of cool.  Would have been more cool with real prisoners.

Day 2: Napa

• Crisp but sunny weather and bright red leaves on the vines provided a stunning backdrop for this idyllic leg of the journey to St. Helena.
• Stopped at Joseph Phelps’ scenic property for a small tasting of several of their wines that I can’t afford by the bottle.  And popped into The Prisoner Wine Company for a tasting of their unconventional reds, some of which have been my favorites this past summer to take the edge off the pandemic.

Day 3: Yosemite Park

• Living in the Rockies you tend to take spectacular mountain views for granted.  However, driving though the Sierra-Nevada mountain range down into the Yosemite valley was breathtaking.
• Thought about attempting the second ever free-solo ascent of El Capitan after watching the movie (that guy is nuts!).  Settled for a nice long hike up a well-traveled trail towards Half-Dome mountain amongst waterfalls and giant sequoia trees instead…

Day 4: Carmel

• Back to the coast for a round of golf at Spyglass Hill at the Pebble Beach Resort.  Didn’t slice any drives into the ocean, but I wouldn’t say my game is in top form since our course closed for the season at the end of Sept.
• Then into the car for a drive along the Pacific Coast Highway past Big Sur and down to Pisco Beach and San Luis Obispo for a spectacular sunset then dinner (btw, at this point I was no longer embarrassed asking for “a table for one please”)

Day 5: LA

• Admittedly I originally had bigger plans for LA, but as the day got closer, L.A. became the hotspot in California for COVID so much was shut down. 
• Settled for visiting a few outdoors sights.  First a quick visit to Venice Beach.  I thought it would be scenic but edgy, more “real” than Santa Monica.  Turns out its too real.  I was scared to get out of my rental car.
• So I headed up to the Hollywood hills where I was more likely to find the beautiful people.  Hiked up to the sign, just to say I did, then headed on out of town into the desert.

Day 6/7: Palm Springs

• Unfortunately the big event that I had planned for Day 6 was cancelled at the last minute… you guessed it, due to new Covid restrictions.  Was scheduled for a session at the BMW Performance Center test driving their new cars around the track.  Had to settle for driving my rented VW Passat at moderate speeds to Joshua Tree National Park instead.  I thought on a hot sunny hike in the desert through traditional native lands I might find my spirit animal and have great revelations of self.  Just found Joshua trees.
• Finished the trip in Palm Springs with another round of golf and a bit of time relaxing by the pool before my flight home.

Back in Calgary now and have cleared quarantine after my airport COVID test has come back negative. That was a lot of Jonny Gould time. But all well worth it. Not quite what it could have been given the current situation, but I’m fortunate to have had the opportunity to safely get out and experience another little corner of the world beyond my usual horizons.

Time to turn my attention to Christmas (whatever that looks like this year) and then back to work in a month…

One of the projects I wanted to accomplish on this sabbatical was to get myself a cool new commuter car.  Not necessarily a mid-life crisis car.  But something a little more sophisticated than the Jeep, and fun to drive.  Having enlisted my oldest son as my automotive advisor, we spent the better part of a month trying to narrow down what the right car for me would be, and would be acceptable to a car snob like him… We finally agreed on the ‘07/’08 Audi RS4.  Sleek yet conservative styling, practical 4 doors but not an “old man sedan”, and most importantly, a manual transmission with 425 horsepower – REAL driving.  And at about the same price as the Jeep.

Only problem is that it’s a car collectors’ car, rarely available in good condition, and if so, it gets snapped up quickly.  A couple were immediately for sale in Calgary but my mechanic had a look and suggested we walk away from both of them. We continued watching the market for a few months, but nothing surfaced and we began slowly losing hope.  Then one popped onto our radar this week. Only problem was it was in Vancouver 1,000km away.  Knowing we had to act quickly, and after a little back and forth with the owner, a car purchase road trip came together the next day.  Fly there, drive it back.

With my trusty car advisor sidekick in tow (happy to ditch school for 2 days…), we met the owner, looked under the hood, nodded our heads and made some comments like we knew what we were talking about (“looks really clean”, “nice new fuel injectors”), advised him that we would take it, and were on our way. We were told the car had some drive shaft issues but took a leap of faith that they weren’t too bad, or at least would survive the trip home. 

Stop #1 was to buy some winter tires on the way out of town, as it was a Vancouver summer car that had to get back to Calgary via the Rocky Mountains.  Stop #2 was when we were pulled over by the police, who saw us driving a little bit fast (425 horsepower remember), ran the license plate and thought the car was stolen because the plate was registered to a Jeep…

Long story short, we made it but it still sits at my mechanic waiting for a front axle replacement.  Its already become a passion project money pit, but glad we got a chance to make this happen.  Definitely wouldn’t have come together without the sabbatical…

Feels like we’ve entered the “dog days” of the sabbatical. Struggling to recall any great new accomplishments or learnings from this past week.  Just a whole lot of at-home job jar tasks. And more socially distanced work outs.  Pretty soon I may have to break down and start riding the Peloton bike in my basement.

That being said, the kids and I knocked off a couple of fun things. There was another PD day at school on Friday (it’s now become clear to me that there are way more of these than I ever imagined – I may need to re-consider a new career as a grade 5 teacher, they get sabbaticals right?). So, my youngest son and I tried out a new 3D flight simulator experience in town.  We got to “fly” F-18 fighter jets. Pretty complicated set ups so I figured I’d have the advantage, but clearly the hours upon hours of video games played had prepared my son well for the battle, shooting me out of the sky repeatedly. I’m more of a Navy guy anyways.

I also took my meditation practice to a whole new level this week with a “float” experience at the spa.  One hour enclosed inside of a large egg-shaped pod floating in salt water in complete darkness with nothing but my own thoughts. Interesting sensory deprivation exercise. Still trying to decide if it was the ultimate in relaxation or torture. But my guess is that they picked up this pod unit at a Guantanamo Bay estate sale.

Working on a few fun plans for the coming week, but don’t want to get too far ahead of myself here in the event they get sidetracked with any further lockdown.

PS:  Finally began my “bake your own sourdough bread” project.  Turns out you need to grow a yeast starter for 7 days. This is proving more complicated than planned.  Stay tuned.

Well, that’s 2/3rds of the way though the sabbatical.  Even with 2 months to go, it’s starting to feel like the end is near.  And that feels a bit like stress (which I haven’t felt for some time…).  I’ve yet to sit down for some quiet thinking about what I have, or haven’t, learned so far from this time off.  I keep kicking that introspection down the road whenever it surfaces on the to do list. 

I feel like there’s still so much more to do, but a few things are conspiring against me, not the least of which is the latest round of restrictions due to COVID.  For starters, my fitness regime has taken a hit with the cancellation of hockey and tennis.  These were the anchors of my day around which I’d plan the rest of my activities (squeezed in between school drop off and pick up).  And travel restrictions continue to put a hitch in my grand vision of circumnavigating the globe by hot air balloon.  But I’m working on coming up with a somewhat scaled down travel adventure.  We’ll see.

With the older kids having a few days off school this past week, I was eager for some new mini-adventures.  On Thursday we donned our best cowboy attire from the Stampede and headed out to the Rocky Mountain foothills for some horseback trail riding.  This was a big step for us as we don’t come from a long line of cattle ranchers.  In fact, I’ve not been on a horse in the past 40 years.  Fortunately, the horses were professionals who could do the tour on autopilot. I still really want to try steer wrestling though. I think I’d be good. At least I look good in the hat. (Instagram @sabbaticaldadjon)

Was eager for another adventure on Friday, but the kids each took it upon themselves to make plans with their own friends.  This left me feeling a bit forlorn, but I guess this sabbatical isn’t only about me.

I did get out downhill skiing for the first time this year with my oldest son on Saturday.  Half day at Lake Louise then lunch at the Chateau.  Might as well do it in style or I’m not going to survive what is likely to be the longest ski season ever…

When it’s hard to come up with anything to write about, you know that it’s been kind of a wasted week. Not that I didn’t have more of the same good quality time with my family, but it was short on new adventures.  Admittedly, I’ve gotten a bit complacent. The sabbatical was meant to help break out of the status quo, not fall into another one. I will redouble my efforts to do more fun stuff…

On the positive side, I’ve used this free time recently to reach out to various old friends with whom I haven’t connected in some time.  “Busy with work” had become my justification for having lived an increasingly less social life.  Reminiscing about the good old days with these folks has been a good reminder of the many hilarious, adventurous, and dumb yet entertaining things we used to do, and should continue doing…

As an aside, one disconcerting thing that I have noticed as a result of being at home is that rarely a day goes by that an on-line purchase delivery doesn’t arrive at my front door.  I have become quite well acquainted with the UPS delivery guy.  My wife has owned up to most of the purchases, but I’ve also become drunk with the power of free next day delivery that my new Amazon Prime account brings.  It was my oldest son’s 15^th birthday this past week, and based on his pile of presents he was certainly the beneficiary of this accelerated global supply chain.

Normally Halloween would be the highlight of this week, but this year it felt like a bit of a non-event.  The house decorations were up and then down within 24 hours.  With no adult parties, and with my bigger kids no longer out on the “trick or treat” scene, and the little guy self-sufficient enough to go door to door alone (in fact more than self-sufficient as he scored 358 units of candy), this was the first year in quite some time that I didn’t get dressed up.  A shame given that on sabbatical I would have had time to come up with an epic costume (not to say the recent years’ costumes of Darryl Hall (of Hall & Oates) and former WWE superstar Jake “the Snake” Roberts weren’t epic…).   None the less, good times were had with a few close friends and some Chinese food take out (as per our long-standing family tradition).

Did get a little extra quality time with the kids this past week thanks to school PD days on Monday and Friday.  Quality time, as in racing go-carts and shooting 9mm Glocks at the gun range… (see photographic evidence on Instagram @SabbaticalDadJon).

Slowly making progress on my tennis game, having played every day last week.  Still a lot of work to do to keep up with the tennis moms though.

Another cold drab week.  I was even more acutely aware of the preciousness of time and the speed at which it passes, as it was my birthday on Thursday.  Forty-something.  High forty-something. I’m definitely not happy about the whole thing. I don’t value the wisdom of age over the carefree (and pain free) naivety of youth. 

The day itself was like many other during this sabbatical.  Plenty of quiet time, pensive time, enjoyed with a glass of wine by myself as my family was off doing their various activities. 

I had time to take stock of my physical wellbeing. Sprained wrist from hockey, sore knees from tennis, but otherwise feeling good.  Got on the scale for a quarterly weigh-in.  Pleased to find that I tipped the scales at a 25 year low, right at my high school fighting weight. While my secret to weight-loss during my working life has been a regimen of stress and malnourishment, these past few months have probably been a slightly more sustainable path to good health…  All of that being said though, this may prove to be the bottom, as I spent the rest of the weekend dining out and drinking…

Pulled the birthday “card” quite a bit all weekend long to try to stretch out the rare time that the family focusses on me and I actually get what I want, for a change.  So when my wife suggested cross country skiing (or the “misery sticks” as my son calls them) on Sunday, I was able to veto that idea and organized a family outing to an Escape Room. I always wanted to be a detective. However, we didn’t get all that close to escaping, so I can safely scratch that off the list of career changes. It was a lot of fun though, and little bit of family team-building doesn’t hurt every once and a while…

Back to reality again this coming week as I return to being a shuttle driver and “regular status” (second class?) family member.