By 2022, I had spent more than a decade working. Quite hard. Actually more than two decades if you count internships, university years and even the final few years of high school where I was also working quite hard to make sure I could get in the university I wanted to get into.

In the final two years of this intense work spree, covid hit - which coincided with me moving into my very own place, not shared with family or friends or a partner. As covid restrictions were put in place, most of my opportunities for social interaction in real life disappeared and I spent Christmas in my little flat in London, unable to travel home to my family in France. Like so many other people.

The whole covid experience also coincided with me taking on a new corporate job at a more senior level. My objectives were even more challenging than in any other corporate job I'd ever had. I was excited about the challenge. I loved the work and the company. And during those two covid years, I poured all my energy into work, shaping change and making it happen at an incredible pace for the company, and finding meaning in the fact that my work was helping to build a better business that had the ambition to become one of the leaders of the energy transition in Great Britain. I felt giddy from the experience and lost any concept of personal space while delivering this meaningful work.

‍

In 2021, I turned 35 and started to feel like I wanted to take a break. I hesitated for a while, worrying that it would damage my career to do so, but as soon as I started asking my gut what felt like the right decision, it became obvious that going a long sabbatical was what I needed then. So I temporarily left my full-time job at the end of January 2022 for a 12-month sabbatical.

My first intention was to rest from the whirlwind of having worked intensely for such a long time in jobs that I was lucky to have cared a lot about. My second intention was to figure out what kind of meaningful work I would be interested in doing outside the constraints of the corporate world.

Well, it's been a ride!

‍

I spent the first five months of my sabbatical on nomadic travels with my partner. We started off with three months in Mexico, exploring Mexico City, Oaxaca, Puerto Escondido, Mazunte, Palenque as well as Mérida and its surroundings. We then travelled back to Europe where we spent time in London, Budapest and France before flying to Singapore and then landing in Indonesia (Bali) around the five-month mark.

Not going to lie, I found nomading both exciting and really stressful.

I was excited about discovering new places, tasting delicious food, exploring new landscapes, experiencing different vibes etc. But I got really stressed out about things like not being able to communicate easily with locals when I didn't speak Spanish (well) or Hungarian (at all); like having to find places to shop for produce that I actually wanted to eat every time that we moved; or like having to adapt to new kinds of noises that invaded my headspace at times where I wished they didn't e.g. noisy trucks driving up the road as I was trying to work, or monumental ocean waves crashing every 3 seconds (literally) as I was trying to sleep.

By the time we landed in Bali, I was done with travelling.

Travelling had been taking up almost all of my headspace and energy whether it was because I was settling into a new place, prepping the next set of travels or actually travelling between cities or even countries. I wanted to stay put in one location, in one home, so I could finally build a routine that would allow me to find time, headspace an energy for the work I wanted to do on myself.

So - after a chaotic two-week period of settling into Bali in all its beauty and weirdness - we decided to stay there for as long as our visa were allowing us to i.e. six months.

‍

From the moment we decided we would stay put, I was finally able to relax. I was also finally able to start doing things for longer periods of time than a month - which is the maximum amount of time that we'd been staying in the various places we visited during our five months of travelling. And without knowing or intending it, I started slowly exploring a more embodied way of being.

The sun was rising at 06:00 every morning and we had a big terrace - so I started exercising at 06:30 every morning, enjoying the effect that every movement had on my body as I was building up strength and enjoying the warmth of the sun on my skin. I also started feeling a lot more energetic during the day, which was a lovely side-effect.

I could feel the tension that had been building up from the chronic stress from work and travelling and decided to stretch that tension out. Stretching had always felt like a waste of time to me - any time spent stretching was time that was not spent on cardio or strength exercises - and for the first time ever, I started enjoying the feeling of relief and openness that came as I slowly released some of the tension that was stored in my body. I started moving more freely.

And as I was listening to my body's physical need to exercise and stretch, I naturally and unconsciously ended up listening more closely to my body's emotional needs as well.

I started being able to understand what I 'wanted' to be doing and act accordingly, rather than doing what I 'should' be doing at all times. This was new to me. I had been directing my work and my life following my 'shoulds' for such a long time that I'd forgotten how to direct them following my 'wants'. I had even forgotten how to listen to my 'wants' or even what they were in the first place.

I started embodying my wants more. I exercised and stretched because I felt deep-down that it was good for me. I mostly stopped drinking alcohol and eating sugar because my body was giving me clear signals that it was something that it had rather I not do. I started not socialising when I didn't feel like it instead of pushing myself into going out 'just for a bit' like my past self would have done.

This all felt terribly freeing.

This also meant that I started welcoming my emotions at moments where I would have ignored them or invalidated them in the past. I discovered breathwork and tantra which helped accelerate that process. Breathwork helped me access and process emotional uncertainty or ‘stuckness’ that I’d been unknowingly storing inside my nervous system. Tantra showed me that if I validate and process my emotions consciously as and when they come up, then those emotions are able to move freely inside my body and therefore don’t get stuck anywhere.

‍

In parallel to this whole embodiment programme that I had no idea I was signing up for when I started my sabbatical, I've also been geeking out about really cool stuff that I hadn't had a chance to geek out on while I was working full-time. To be fair, I didn't even know I would want to geek out on those things, I was too busy doing the corporate work I cared so much about.

As I stepped outside of the world of corporates, I slowly discovered other worlds that I either knew existed and hadn't participated in yet, or that I didn't even know existed and was thrilled to explore. And I learned a bunch of new and fun skills in the process.

I started writing in the first week of my sabbatical. I wanted to feel comfortable writing, to learn how to write well, and to feel comfortable sharing my writing with family and friends before sharing it with the world. In the first three months of my sabbatical, I wrote 2-3 posts on average every week, with lengths varying from 500 to 4,000 words. The topics varied hugely, from posts that felt like writing you would find on a (good, of course) travel blog, recipes that people had been asking me for regularly over the years, some work-flavoured posts, and some more personal posts.

I decided to be more active online. That was a Big Deal. The most online I had been was through my Facebook profile (which I de-activated in 2020) and my LinkedIn profile (which I used as an online CV rather than as a way to connect with others). The idea of creating my little corner of the internet and starting to connect with communities that I would have never had a chance to connect with in real life was both thrilling and daunting. One month into my sabbatical, I created my own website on which I uploaded my writing. Three months in, I created a Twitter account - and started posting, although it took me days to muster the courage to post for the first time.

I'd always been interested in neuroscience, and had actually managed to find the time to complete Harvard EdX' 'Fundamentals of Neuroscience' while working at my corporate job. But when I arrived in Budapest, I started geeking out about neuroscience big time, listening to internet celebrity professor Huberman explain how our nervous system is wired and what practical things we can do to live in a way that aligns with the way it works. I made visual summaries of some of his teachings and posted them on Twitter for others to access without having to listen to Hubermans' lengthy podcasts if they didn't have the time or the inclination to.

I rediscovered my passion for design. Or rather I was able to recognise that it was a passion of mine and not something that I simply did because it made my work stand out and I enjoyed doing it. I learned to used a design tool called Figma which is basically a more design-flavoured version of PowerPoint. Also, when I got annoyed at the fact that my (very basic) personal website didn't allow me to create the online space I was imagining in my head, I got into web design - and ended up spending a few weeks learning how to use a more advanced web design tool, and then another month upgrading my website.

I started exploring the working sphere outside of corporates, full of creators, solopreneurs, start-ups, decentralised autonomous organisations. I got really excited by some of the novel ideas they have on how to revolutionise the ways businesses function. I started working with people in that space, and am helping organising a event in November 2022 that is aiming to inspire people into doing better and more meaningful work together - and give them tips on how to do so. I also got enthralled by the novel skills - both hard and soft - that some creators and solopreneurs are managing to teach online. Some of those courses have upskilled me profoundly and some of those have even changed me meaningfully as a human, in ways that corporate learning and development has never managed to do.

‍

When you read those paragraphs one after the next, it might sound like I had a clear plan of action and that I was able to work on those things consistently week after week.

Lol.

I've actually found it quite hard to direct my work without having any constraints to work in.

In the corporate world, you have a role that is well defined - and you know what you should be working on, whether you like the projects you are responsible for or not - and you know when you are expected to be working.

Outside of the corporate world, when you're directing your own work, the world is your oyster. You could do anything. This is both liberating (yay, I can do whatever I want) and paralysing (I have no idea what I should start with or what has the most value). You also don't have time constraints which means you are the one deciding when you are working, rather than putting yourself to work between 9 and 5 like most corporates ask their teams to do. This is both a blessing (you can work when you are most productive and creative) and it can also be a trap (you are the only one who can invite yourself to work, and sometimes you won't feel like it).

I've found that it is much harder to decide to work when you're doing creative work. Creativity doesn't come to you because you decide the time has come for it to flow. I have found that I've needed to approach work in a very different way as a result: instead of setting time constraints within which I would get my 'creative' work work done like I would get my 'productive' work done in corporates, I've been directing my work based on what my body and mind were inviting me to do in the moment. Sometimes, I'd feel invited to do design work. Sometimes, I'd sense an urge to sit in front of a blank sheet of paper and outline my vision for a better future for humanity.

This has meant that I have had to let go of doing specific pieces of work for days - or even weeks - at a time, which is something I've had a hard time accepting.

Basically, being self-directed is hard work.

It has ups and downs. Many ups. Many downs. Very high ups. Very low downs. For now, and within the constraints of my sabbatical, the ups  - and the perspective of more ups - make it all worth it.