Before quitting my job, I made an initial list of goals for myself for my gap year. This list is a living document and will surely change during my year off. But I’d like to share it with you today.
The goal this year is to rest, reset and rediscover myself. Accordingly, all the activities described further down should fit that overarching goal.
Rest
Leisure and home activities
First of all, I want to rest during the year! I want to take advantage of not working to do leisurely things during the middle of the week. My wife and I will regularly go paddleboarding on the river and workout when the local gym is empty. We’ll go watch matinee movies. We’ll do some day trips to nearby cities and enjoy being outside in the local nature around us. We will also travel outside the country once or twice.
I will spend more time cooking. I used to be a good cook, but as my energy batteries drained during my professional career, I stopped doing it. This meant eating out more often and spending a lot more money. Now that I have some more time, I will cook once again, helping us not spend as much money, and hopefully eat better as well.
I will also take care of some chores around the house. There’s a big list of things that I need to fix around the house or the yard. This is definitely not the fun part of taking a gap year! But it will be good to work on something with immediate usefulness.
Reset Myself
Work on hobbies
This is the hobby section! I have many hobbies… Too many, in fact. But now I have the chance to decide which one I will focus on during my year off. Over the years, I have picked up the following hobbies: photography, music production, woodworking, rock climbing and playing video games. It’s quite a lot and I have come to realize that I will not be able to focus on all my hobbies this year. At least, not at the same time. As you will see later, I’m introducing a seasonality aspect to my hobbies. This will help me have fun with all of them, but during different parts of the year.
Start coding again
I would like to reskill myself as a software engineer. It’s been too long since I worked as a software engineer, and it would be good to have a plan B, in case none of my other projects pan out. I don’t know that I want to be a manager again, so in order to find work after my year is up, I should spend some time rebuilding my skills. Honestly, I have missed coding. It’s an activity that brings me a lot of joy and it has been such a long time since I’ve experienced it.
I’m not sure what programming language I’ll focus on, but I’m pretty sure I need to focus on full stack development. While I haven’t coded in five years, it must have been at least 10 years since I’ve written any code on the frontend, building UIs and web applications. I need to catch up on this.
A good way to get back into the swing of things would be to develop apps and try to earn some money that way. It would accomplish both goals of relearning how to code and try to extend my gap year for as long as possible. I will discuss this a bit more in the next section.
Rediscover Myself
To me, self-rediscovery is about finding new ways to live my life. I do not want to get back into the same lifestyle that drained my batteries. How can I explore new avenues this year? What makes me tick and fills me with joy? How can I provide for my family in a way that is sustainable? I would like to answer these questions.
Develop new sources of income
How I would love to extend my gap year indefinitely! I might not feel the same way in a few months after I’ve recovered my energy. I might even get tired of any new income source I find. But right now, my dream is to be paid to do something I enjoy without having to go back to work.
I could use a hobby that I’m already good at and try to be paid to do it. I did just that when I became a professional software engineer after a few years of coding for fun as a teenager. Coding became less fun once it became a job, so I’m not blind to the fact that this will probably happen again if I turn my hobbies into jobs.
I could also get paid to write books, which is something I’m seriously considering at the moment. I have co-written a book four years ago that I still receive some royalties for. It’s not much, but it’s something I’m receiving for what now feels like no effort at all. If I wrote a few useful books, the royalties could add up and become enough income to sustain my livelihood. So, I already started researching and reading about software engineering happiness. I’m not exactly sure year how I will structure such a theme, however. Stay tuned to learn more as I figure this out!
Finally, I could build apps, which would bring me back to being a software engineer and would tie in nicely with my goal of relearning how to code.
Write blog posts about my gap year
And here we are!
I do need an outlet for organizing my thoughts. The goal of this site is to publish articles on different topics related to the book I want to write. This will help me gain some momentum and get some early feedback. At the very least, I’ll have some ideas out in the wild in case I don’t finish the book, so they don’t disappear into the void.
I also want to use my blog to document my gap year. This could be useful to others and even myself if I want to look back at my time off.
The Timeline
I will divide my gap year into four seasonal segments: summer, fall, winter and spring. I will start by spending the summer and fall working on my book, music production, leisure activities and maybe spend some time thinking about potential apps I’d like to code later in the second half of the year.
I’ll then spend winter and spring relearning how to code and work more on the book if I have gained some real momentum on it. I’ll also switch from my music production hobby to woodworking as the temperatures cool off outside since my workshop is not temperature controlled.
The last three months of the year is when I’ll start seriously thinking about returning to work, if needed. The pressure to earn a living will start growing and I will have to start looking.
So, this is it. This is what I’ll be spending most of my time on during the year. With a sprinkle of some extra hobbies, like photography, I will keep up with the blog and my leisurely activities throughout the year. I will even take some “vacation” time here and there to travel! Let’s see where I end up going…