Today was my first day back at work after three months of paid leave. I'd meant to write about the overall experience of my sabbatical and the things I gained from it before I returned, but I'm glad I didn't because one of the lessons only crystallised this morning.

My typical work schedule automattic, sabbatical, work, slack

Today is International Volunteer Day. And because I'm in the middle of my (magical) sabbatical, I've had no difficulty dedicating what would have been the entire workday to a variety of volunteer activities for the benefit of Three Rings, the nonprofit I founded 22 years ago for the purpose of international volunteer day, volunteering, sabbatical, three rings, dancast

A couple of weeks ago, I kicked off my first sabbatical since starting at Automattic a little over five years ago.

The first fortnight of my sabbatical has consisted of:

Three Rings CIC's AGM weekend and lots of planning for the future of the organisation and how we make it a better

automattic, volunteering, sabbatical, three rings, work, theme park, job, travel, barcelona, castles, spain

Location
Harcourt Hill Bridleway, between Cumnor and North Hinksey
Participants

Dan Q

Plans
I'm on sabbatical from work right now, so I'm hoping to be able to get out to this hashpoint while the kids are at school.
Expedition
After dropping the kids off at school, the geopup/hashhound hash log, sabbatical, geohashing, video, dogs

Six or seven years ago our eldest child, then a preschooler, drew me a picture of the Internet. I framed it and I keep it on the landing outside my bedroom - y'know, in case I get lost on the Internet and need a map:

I found myself reminded of this piece of childhood art when she once again volunteering, sabbatical, hosting, three rings, children, parenting, internet, dogs

tl;dr: I'm tidying up and consolidating my personal hosting; I've made a little progress, but I've got a way to go - fortunately I've got a sabbatical coming up at work!

At the weekend, I kicked-off what will doubtless be a multi-week process of gradually tidying and consolidating some of the abnib, automattic, sabbatical, rockmonkey, hosting, web, deed poll, blogging, github, dungeons and dragons, hangman, geohashing, freshrss, internet, murder mystery