I’m grateful that I get a generous paternity policy at work. 12 weeks of fully paid leave and I intend on taking it all. I’ve been working pretty aggressively for that past 5 years here (which included double-shifting an MBA at the same time) and I’m tired.
I don’t intend to take this time to zone out in front of my phone, but rather to reconnect with hobbies, family, and shed my addiction to work.
Here’s generally what I intend on doing:
- Spend more time outdoors - Take ample time to get my boat out, scout more hunting locations, and just ramble along the Cumberland river. I intend on just doing more things outside in general; cleaning up the yard, reading, and writing.
- Spend time making things - It’s hard to find time to do any level of woodworking during the regular course of life, but I’d really love to reconnect with that skillset. I’m gonna make so many boxes and tables, just so many of them.
- Be Analog - Technology makes so many aspects of my life easier. I’ve always struggled with analog methods because they’re just too inefficient, but efficiency is not the goal during my leave.
- Throw away the phone - Spend less time with my nose in the black slate that steals so much of my time. I have an Apple Watch with cellular so that I can still be reachable (as a father of 2 kids and 2 dogs).
- Back to shooting - I used to love competitive shooting, but skills have taken a dive as I’ve fallen out of practice with marksmanship (pistol, rifle, and shotgun alike). I intend on resharpening that skill.
- Coding - As an IT manager, I seldom get the time to actually practice my coding skills. I’m planning to build out a few projects and learn some new languages while I’m at it. I loved the time I could take to actually build thing before and I plan on doing more of this.
- Read more challenging content - Most of my reading lately has been comicbooks, sci-fi novels, and simpler business books. After a long workday or weekends with kids, my brain can’t handle dense topics. I intend on reading harder content and ruminate in the thoughts/lessons of those books.
Finally, a big portion of my paternity will be to just connect with my family. They’re all cool people and I would really like to get to know all of them better.