Pat leave day 1
Not having to go to the email or slack app on the phone first thing in the day feels very weird. It feels like an enormous load is missing from the mind space. It will take a few days to adjust to the new normal.
I am lucky enough to get the two-month Pat Leave, especially in current macroeconomic conditions. Chargebee is one of the few companies in India which offers four months of pat leave. It was a conscious decision to take only two months. Staying away from work for four months would have been difficult, and I did not want to give more reasons to the org to be okay with my absence for a long time. They shouldn't get ideas :)
We have Gubbi's naming ceremony in a week, and all the required preparations are happening. We need to shop for clothes, so we are driving to a nearby place in Maharashtra.
I am looking forward to spending time with Gubbi.
Work takes up a lot of mind space. It lives rent-free in your head, at least correspondingly more than the salary you get. I read this excellent line in the book "Four Thousand Weeks", which said staying busy numbs you emotionally and you stop paying attention to other aspects of life. I am paraphrasing here, so I might be missing the exact statement.
The immediate realisation of the pat leave is that you have the mind space to focus on other things. You get the gist.
It's not that you don't find the mind space to focus on life itself. You do, but you don't get to sit with the emotions. There's always a meeting, a task to get back to, and an email to respond to.
Work is a great excuse to miss living life that challenges you to accept the mortality of your decisions. Nobody questions it. Everybody is okay with making work the top priority, even if it means they are being neglected because of it.
I am aware of the pressure to make the pat leave productive. Learn something, build something, think of better ways to solve a work problem, upskill, read, and so much more. I do not want to do any of these to make the most of my two months. I may do only a few or all of these because I want to do them. When I look back at these two months, I do not wish to have something on the report card for "How I spent the two months"?
I want to spend time with my family doing nothing. I want to get bored with Gubbi in my arms. I want to pay attention to the time that's elapsing and not feel the urge to do something with it.
In my 11 years of professional working experience, I have not had a break for more than a few weeks. This two-month break is a new thing for me. I had always wanted to experience the luxury of a sabbatical. Still, I never found the courage to ask for one fearing the consequences of losing a job.
I have yet to plan to write the blog during the leave, although I like the idea. I want to write more because it's the best use of mind space.