3 days left of Sabbatical
Since I posted on my “3 Days” perspective before my 10-week sabbitical… I should follow w/ perspective at the end of my sabbitical as well.
In short. Life changing. Without a doubt. There is a growing trend and theory in “micro-retirements”, i.e. that one should try and have several extended periods of “retirement” throughout life to refresh/grow and simply not save up everything until you’re 65… I couldn’t agree more.
Status and final goals analysis:
- Initial Goal: Family - spend copious amounts of time w/ Shannon, Holland and Truman
- Result - 24/7 with family created a new routine where the kids, mama and papa had day after day of local adventures, famers markets, pumpkin patches, coast excurtions, parks and plain old quite time. The best.
- Initial Goal: Fitness - hire and train w/ a personal trainer
- Result - Done. Today is my last day w/ my trainer Johnny over sabbatical. He’s been fantastic. After 14 sessions w/ still 2 sessions post-sabbitcal, I’ve dropped 4 to 5 percentage points of body fat, and inch plus around my mid section and lost weight in general. I’m the fittest I’ve been during my entire adult life. I feel fantastic, strong and ready physically and mentally for new challenges.
- Initial Goal: Cooking - hone my culinary skills around sauces and the chemistry of food
- Result - Fitness is 80% diet. Exercise alone will get you no where. I also come from a very artistic family, yet I’ve never really really found my medium of strength… Yet, I’ve come to realize that cooking, the melding of the fives tastes, bringing acids and bases in or out of balance, introducing heat, etc. is my medium and outlet for creative expression. Now… with the introduction of healthier preparation, low-fat/high-protein foods, copiuos amounts of veges and culinary techniques from France to Indonesia - food is a wonderful and necessary part of life.
- Initial Goal: Read - get to all those books piled on the side of my bed
- Books:
- Omnivore’s Dilemma- Michael Pollan - modern and industrial food production and farming, where modern food comes from - amazing.
- The Looming Tower: Road to 9/11 - Lawrence Wright - the best book I’ve read on the growth of Islamic Fundamentalism
- Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut (thanks Kolby for the re-introduction)
- The Places In Between - Rory Stewart - a walk across Afghanistan in 2002.
- Critical Mass: How one thing leads to another - Pkilip Ball - From Hobbes to Adam Smith - the impact of thousands or millions of individual decisions.
- A History of God - Karen Armstrong - A classic - 4ooo years of how a tribal semetic war-god became the omnipresent and monotheistic diety for Judaism, Christianity and Islam… Its amazing what a little good marketing and PR can accomplish…
So… to recap. I couldn’t be happier with the results and growth in almost all areas of my life.
My only regret is that I didn’t have a goal around my “Civic” side of life. Maybe more to come in 2008 arounf that.
- bgr