With a glass of red wine

In the sunset I enjoy my simple dinner with a glass of red wine. My thoughts wander around until I can not let go of a thought:

I have not been working for 4 weeks.

The last time I left my office was on a Friday. Tired of the farewell party of the previous evening and sad, since I had to say goodbye to many of my great colleagues forever, I sneaked out of the building. The weeks before were exhausting – just like all the weeks before. “I’m a little busy right now,” was one of the standard statements I replied to my colleagues when I was asked why I was in the office until half past eight.

I love to work. I like to get involved in a project. With passion, with sweat and sometimes with tears. Therefore, I started my work in an IT Service Center with much drive and motivation in November 2016. Together with my colleagues we managed to establish a new organizational structure – many things worked out, some did not. I have enjoyed implementing the company goals, I have taken on additional responsibilities with pleasure and acted to the best of my knowledge and belief. Due to private changes I made the decision to leave the company at the end of June 2018 – after a few years in this business I felt the desire to move on in another direction.

Now I am sitting in my simple apartment in Croatia, reviewing the last few weeks. It quickly became clear to me that I would design a blog. I want to use it as my personal “multi-tool” – similar to a Swiss knife it should serve me as a toolbox, where I can pull out the right “blade” as needed: First, it allows me as travel blog to keep in touch with “home” so that my family and friends can accompany my journey. Second, I can try new opportunities for my career. I will try to document my experience in the field of IT, and then publish it on the blog. And thirdly, I allow myself on this blog some personal thoughts that pop-up during my journey – like this one.

After only a few days, it turns out that feeding a blog is quite some work. Apart from the start-up issues (with the blog setup and file upload), so many ideas that I would like to implement are dancing around in my head.

That’s probably the biggest difference for me: a flash of inspiration, a brief idea – that’s enough. I immediately open the laptop and type like crazy. A short time later I can post a new entry. From the idea to the implementation to the completion of a post, all this takes only a few hours. At the end of the day, I have done something, I see quick results, I control my workload myself and can newly decide about it every day. This is the main difference to my previous work, which was largely build around negotiations and often resulted in cumbersome compromise solutions (if any decisions were taken).

Of course, in very few companies this kind of activity is relevant, and I am also not sure if it would be particularly exciting to work in such short cycles, but at the moment I am enjoying this new experience.

I am particularly pleased that so many ideas that are floating around in my head are finally getting a chance to take on a little shape. So far, I have already identified 7 (!) Projects that I would like to work on 🙂 Of course, not everything will work out – not every idea has to be realized, not everything that seems interesting to me is also relevant for others. But I see it as a privilege to have time to think about my next steps.

How do you see that? Did you ever take a career-break? How did you like it?

xoxo anita