My name is Louis and I have spent the last twenty years of my life as a software developer and a software engineering manager. These last few years have been difficult for me, professionally, and I feel like I’ve lost my spark. With this in mind, I decided to take a year off, a gap year, or what some people might refer to as a sabbatical year, although I will not be returning to my last employer at the end of this twelve-month period.
I consider myself to be a happy person. In my personal life, I am a husband and a father. I also feel like I have been very privileged and lucky, and I live somewhere nice surrounded by people I love. But in my career during the past few years, I have felt myself drifting a bit. I used to spend my nights and weekends working on my skillset and learning new things that interested me. However, recently, I have spent my free time watching random YouTube videos and the thought of starting a new project or learning something new never lasts long enough to become something I do. Anything work related has become tedious, a chore, and something I stopped wanting to pursue. I started accumulating hobbies in an attempt to find something that would interest me, but this made the problem worse after realizing that now I had more things on my plate that I wasn’t spending time on. At work, I started reacting to issues instead of being proactive. All in all, I wasn’t headed in the right direction.
So, I decided to take a year off, take a step back and reflect on what gives me purpose. I also want to take this time to let myself heal and see if time away from work will bring back this curiosity that I used to have.
This website will capture my thoughts and emotions, my projects and desires, my random thoughts and more serious essays during this time away from work.
