Tag: sabbatical

Reflections: 6 months into my writing sabbatical

On By aftheadIn politics, Rants, stories, Uncategorized, writing4 Comments

It’s been 6 months and 6 days since I stepped away from my job supporting the US Department of Energy, US Federal Highway Administration, US Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, and National Resources Canada where I helped build and document electric charging stations and alternative fuel stations around northern North America. When I left, the election hadn’t happened yet. Kamala Harris was 47 days into her campaign and people at work were confident in her presidency. I even had one of my bosses scoff at me when I mentioned that one of my reasons for leaving was the potential impact on our work from a Trump presidency. He insisted, “That’s never going to happen.”

It happened. One day shy of two months after I left my job supporting the Federal Government Trump won. Four and a half months after I left he took office, and since then I’ve watched from a distance as he’s demolished the work I spent decades building. It’s weird not being in the trenches with my old co-workers trying to salvage what we can.

I swear, if one more person asks me, “Aren’t you SOOOO GLAD you got out when you did?” I’m going to punch them. I’m sorry if it’s you, but I’m sick of it. I worked in public service because I believe in the importance of what the government does for it’s people. I built a team of smart, innovative, caring people who wanted to change the world and our country for the better. I left for a year, not because I wanted to be the first in the swamp drainage, but because I was tired and burned out from working and doing so much. My job consisted of managing 25 people with 30% of my time, and with the other 70% I supported a $16M portfolio, did business development, and managed five of my own projects where I was an individual contributor. I’m so fucking tired of hearing the bullshit about lazy government workers who do nothing. That was not my experience. I’m sick that my team and my projects are being demolished and I can’t help. But I also know that if I was still there, I’d probably be locked away in some padded room rocking slowly, because I was so far over capacity. I would have had no ability to continue working my ass off while the president and his cabinet destroyed our government.

Instead of having an insider’s perspective on the dismantling of the great experiment that was the United States of America’s constitutional division of power, I have been writing. I also left my job, because I had a dream I wanted to realize: to finish my novel. My first month I polished up a short fiction piece, that I love, called Bumblecat. I’m afraid it might never find a home because it’s been rejected five times since I started shopping it around, and it talks about the USDA, which may be dissolved any day. I wrote a second piece about becoming the United States Egg Czar. That one is quite funny, and was also rejected. (But the rejection said it was funny, so I know it is actually funny.) It’s going up on the blog this weekend, because it’s a timely piece and I don’t want it to expire. I hope you like it. The third piece, which will go up on my blog next week is a gut wrencher of a piece about my cat who died in November of 2024. It was also rejected and since it is outside of my normal satire and speculative fiction space and I’m not in the mood to research a bunch of new markets to reject me.

Rejection is my life’s theme right now. My daughter just got cut from the club basketball team she’s been playing on for 4 years, for her senior season. I’ve had 7 writing rejections in 2025. As a country, we are rejecting the values that I hold dear. Honestly, I feel like I exist in a universe that has no room for me.

Thank goodness I’m creating a whole new universe where I can escape. While I’m woefully behind where I’d like to be in my book, I really like it. The people are fascinating and their struggles are meaningful. When I left in September, I expected to have the manuscript done and ready to start shipping to agents by the end of this month. Ha ha. Turns out creative pursuits do not work like technical projects. I can’t lay out a Gantt chart filled with deliverables, milestones, and deadlines and make something like a novel happen. Thankfully after about 3 months of forcing myself to a schedule, I modified my approach and now have half of a book done. I’ve got a plan for the final half all written out with colorful pens on sticky notes stuck to a cardboard thing you’d use at a science fair. I know where I’m going and I’m excited about the direction. I’ve also got book 2 pretty solidified in my head, and book 3 keeps popping in to say “hello.”

The plan was to give this writing thing a year, and then go back to work. But right now, I don’t think there will be work to go back to. My expertise in electric cars and electric car charging has limited value in our country. My 20 years of experience working across the Federal Government is meaningless once the departments I know are dissolved. And everything I write gets rejected, so even if I get this book done, it’s unlikely to ever find a home. All I can do on a daily basis is kick all those worries down the road for future Johanna. Present Johanna still has 6 months of freedom to finish her dream of writing a book, and I try to push away the fear and worry to focus on creating a new world that doesn’t suck as much as this one. Hopefully you’ll get to read about it someday.

So, Watcha been Doin’?

On By aftheadIn Designing Your Life, Uncategorized, Work, writing2 Comments
My desk at Library #4

It’s been two weeks since I left my job to live the dream of being a full time writer. Inevitably, everyone’s first questions are “Are you writing?” or “How’s your book coming?” My first week I had a list of activities that would prove to myself and my friends that I was doing the writing thing. I investigated libraries as writing offices. I became my own tech support and installed a new battery in my laptop, then downloaded Scrivner (a software package for writers). I took the Scrivner tutorial, then found all my novel files, and uploaded them into the Scrivner novel template. I rearranged my desk into a writer’s desk, rather than a worker’s desk. I wrote a blog post. I made a writing plan. I worked on a short story. I created a to-do list for my novel rewrite. I started reading a writing book. Look at me becoming a full-time-writer.

But I also left my job for personal reasons. My connections to people outside of work were degrading. So I made cookies for a friend who had a death in the family. I attended parent teacher conferences. I went to therapy. I sent a short story to my mom, so she could help make it better. I went on an anniversary hike with my husband and cut his hair. I fixed our YMCA membership so I could start taking classes and work on my physical health. I managed to slowly run a 5k. I drove my kid to volunteer activities and concerts and helped rescue her broken car. Look at me fixing myself and my friends and family.

The first week was just like working, but at a different job, which is what I told everyone I was going to do. I was proud of my accomplishments, and friends were impressed with how I’d transitioned right over to this new life.

The second week tells a different story.

I also left my job because I was exhausted and my personal life and home life were suffering. All that came crashing in the second week. The cat boxes and guinea pig cages were filthy. I still had seven performance reviews to write for the job I quit. (Yeah, I know, unpaid labor, but it was for people I care about.) My health insurance expires soon, so I got my COVID and flu shots, then spent a day and a half asleep in bed. (My normal booster after-effects, but since my only COVID infection lasted 10 days, I keep getting boosted.) I had my final OB/GYN appointment complete with pap smear. Midweek, I tried a full self-care yoga-mom day: I bought tickets for our winter trip; I actually went to a yoga class; I got my nails done with my daughter (homecoming for her, simple vanity for me). I tried to include more people in my week. I had lunch and walked with friends and spent an hour picking apples with my mom in her backyard. The weekend was filled with homecoming activities – volunteering, unexpectedly staying for the football game to visit with friends, steaming my kid’s dress, taking homecoming pictures, and delivering forgotten items around town. The only writer thing I accomplished was working on my short story, visiting a third library, and thinking a lot about my book. One might say I failed week 2 as a writer.

Three weeks ago my days were dictated by my Outlook calendar. Life was scheduled from 8-4 (or 7-6 on a bad day) in half hour or hour chunks going from meeting to meeting to meeting. Often I didn’t have time for lunch, and bathroom breaks were quick jaunts where I had to wait to start my next conference call because you could hear the toilet flushing from my desk. Milestones were set and documented with clients. I had no time to think deeply or be thoughtful.

My other issue is that I’ve been working since I was 14, and working full time since I was 23. Gosh. I’ve been working full time more than half my life. The only break I’ve had in those 27 years was 13 weeks for maternity leave. Okay, I also went down to 32 hours for about a year when my kiddo had non-stop ear infections, and then went down to 32 hours during my last year of my master’s degree, but in both of those cases the extra hours I wasn’t workin’ for the man were dictated by someone other than me. It wasn’t like this. I really don’t know how to not work a regular job.

This is a whole different life in an unexpected way. I’m responsible for deciding what I’m going to do. I’ll write my own performance review. I get to report if I’m succeeding or failing. Am I allowed to take a day off? Can I knit during working hours? Can I write after hours? What are my hours? Is napping allowed? Someone forgot to give me the unemployed workers handbook. This week, I’m going to choose to be kind to myself. Anyone who has worked for me will say that I tell everyone to expect a struggle in the first 3 months of a new job. I’m going to give myself a little of my own managerial grace as I figure this out.

I’m writing this post from library number four. (Oddly, a library I started working at when I was 16.) So far, I’ve found 3 of the 4 libraries to be productive writing work spaces. They have the right amount of background noise and I like being surrounded by books. Today I was able to research points of view from books in the 808 nonfiction section. (I love the Dewey Decimal System.) I’ve got a plan for figuring out if my novel needs first person, third person omniscient, or an editorial narrator. I’m excited about doing some writing on my actual book, not because it’s on a to do list, but because I’m curious. Tonight is writer’s group and I have a writing conference this weekend. I have absolutely promised myself that I won’t let the writing conference crush my soul, as they often do. If I start to hate a session I can leave. I don’t have to go the whole time.

I’m glad that I’m keeping track of my days, because I want to know what makes a day good and productive and what days are frustrating. Just like in my other job, I’ve found that the to-do items I don’t finish make me angry at myself, but I still forget all the things I did accomplish. Going back to review makes me feel better. I haven’t “wasted two weeks” because I haven’t rewritten 87 pages of my novel. I’m being thoughtful with my time and activities. Instead of thinking that I’ve squandered 1/26th of my year off, I’m going to focus on how I’ve set myself up to make the next 25/26ths a success, however I end up defining success.