My big plan for 2019: a grand sabbatical (again)

Hi guys, I've had a good think this weekend about what I want to do in 2019 and I want to take a break from work, a hiatus, a sabbatical. There have been one minor incidents in the last week which have left me questioning why I am working so hard - I had been accused of making a mistake with one of my clients: long story but the client was the one who had approached us with the wrong information - it wasn't me who fed him that wrong information but the client had simply gotten terribly mixed up, jumped to the wrong conclusion on his own accord. Nonetheless I was wrongly accused of having caused the confusion in the first place (no, not my fault) and thankfully, that misunderstanding has been cleared up now, but over something so minor, it caused me so much grief and frustration. You'd like to think that this is the kind of misunderstanding that us mature adults can easily clear up in a very sensible and calm manner, but that's not always the case unfortunately. But regardless, it did get me thinking as it had that 'last straw that broke the camel's back' effect on me when I got quite upset and went to see an old friend to talk about it, to try to reflect over where I am, what I want to do and most importantly, what I would like to do with my life in the coming year - do I want more of the same, do I want a carbon copy of 2018 or do I want something quite different in 2019? One thing is for sure: I do want something different. Here's a movie trailer, it is from one of my favourite films 'Patagonnia' about two women seeking changes in their lives.

The bottom line is that is that I am being paid quite well for what I do but somehow I just don't feel appreciated or all that happy in my current job. I have spoken to a good friend last week about it and he said that trying to find another job that will pay as much as my current one would be a challenge, given how experienced and senior I am so it would be a lot easier to try to mend fences with the people at work for now than to try to find a brand new job in 2019. Now there are two big expenses that I have to face in the next few months - I do have a sizable tax bill coming up at the end of January which has to be paid in full to avoid incurring any penalties, then of course, I then need to pay off my share of the mortgage. My partner and I had to borrow some money to buy our current house in Camden and I'm pretty close to paying at least my half of the mortgage off. I have gone through the figures, done some calculations and I figured out that I actually only need to work another three to four months to clear my half of the mortgage - that's actually a pretty small figure compared to what we had started with. I have just paid off a lump sum of my mortgage last week, so I am putting aside every spare penny I earn towards my January tax bill for now given that I have two paychecks along with some savings I've put aside for it. I will only start working towards clearing that last piece of debt off once that January tax bill has been taken care of.  But once I have paid off my (share of the) mortgage, oh then I think I've earned myself a break!

What will I do? How long will this break be? I don't know. But I look at the way my two sisters work so freaking hard in Singapore and I just shake my head in disbelief. I don't know how they do it. They don't travel that much because they only have a certain number of days of leave they can take a year. I want a long holiday, I want a super long break and being self-employed, I can do exactly that. My first instinct would be to disappear off to South America and travel, given that I am fluent in Spanish and speak some Portuguese. I want to finally do my grand tour of South America visiting Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Brazil - it's all so far away so once I get there, I want to stay for at least 6 to 8 weeks. I have watched quite a lot of South & Central American TV this year so there's definitely a part of me that loves Latin American culture. I have had a taste of it when I visited the Dominican Republic two years ago. I want to go there in their winter in June - August, so I won't be sweating like crazy as I visit all these amazing places (as featured on The Amazing Race) and I could go skiing in Chile and Argentina as well. There are other countries like Georgia, Ukraine and Armenia that I definitely want to visit soon - there's so much traveling that I want to do but first I will go to South America.

But apart from taking a long holiday, what else can I do to give me perspective on life? I would of course like to take time to do some acting again - it would be so nice to get back into acting again but that would depend on me being successful in auditioning for something in 2019. I would also like to do some charity work for a meaningful course and if I could combine that with my travels, to do it in a country where they are not speaking English, then I'll get something out of it as well. So for example, if I go volunteer for say a month in Brazil, that's total immersion in Brazilian-Portuguese for a month and in exchange for my labour, I get to improve my Portuguese - for me, that's a pretty good arrangement given how passionate I am about learning new languages. By that token, I cannot volunteer in a country where they speak English, that would remove the one of the most important aspects of that experience. Otherwise, I won't mind becoming a student again and of course, for me that usually means going to learn a new language. But which new language should I add to my repertoire?  And of course, once I come back from this long break, I can then decide if I want to go back into the world of corporate finance full time again or if I want to broaden my horizons by working on more diverse, different projects. I had been working so hard to pay off my mortgage really quickly - like I want to pay it off in three years and once I've done that, I can take a step back and not worry about money. It's just me - I don't like the idea of being in debt!

So if my calculations are right, I think this sabbatical would come sometime in June 2019 and the details have yet to be finalized - but my mind's made up, it'll be something to look forward to and it will help me get through some of the daily drudgery that I have to face anyway in the meantime. Here's a story that inspired me: I know of this guy Carlo in Texas who is a real estate agent, but everyone always compliments him on how stylish he is and if you were to check out his Instagram, he's absolutely flawless and beautiful. Well, this year he has started his own fashion label on the side, so whilst he's still working by day as an estate agent, he is working hard to get his own men's fashion accessories business off the ground. I find that story really inspiring, a man who is turning his passion for fashion into a business. Will his fashion label ever become so successful he can leave his day job? Who knows, but hats off to him for following his passion! Maybe I want to do something like that - but I don't know which one of my passions I can turn into a money-making enterprise. I have spent a lot of time and effort developing my own app Eureka Languages, but whilst that's a cute educational tool, I've not managed to monetize it or sell it off to someone who will. Maybe I want to try to do something like Carlo on the side to broaden my horizons and try running my own business again - but that would be dependent on having a very solid business plan. I know from experience that isn't easy at all, so I am not sure about it.

So there you go. I am working on another article right now but I just had to share this decision with you guys. What do you think? I want this sabbatical to be more than "oh I am going to go on another grand holiday" and then come back to exactly the same thing. I want more than a nice holiday, I want 2019 to be quite different. So if you have any suggestions on what I could do to broaden my horizons, please let me know and leave a comment below. Many thanks for reading!