sabbatical – All Narfed Up

During my sabbatical last year, I completed one project where the end result was to close my Media Temple account. (It was a good run!) Going forward, I would be saving $22 per year. 💵

I had a grandfathered (gs) Lite plan (shared hosting) at $8.50 per month, or $102 per year.
My other site (bryanvillarin.com) is a now landing page. It was on my projects list to move it to WordPress.com.¹
RSS reader — I stopped using Fever², and mainly use Reeder on my iPhone. After their trial, I kept my Feedbin subscription. $30 per year. I could tell that my feeds refresh much more quickly. Their site works well, too. 🙂
Email — I switched to FastMail³ by following most of their fantastic migration information. $50 per year for the Standard plan. Free trial available. They have two-factor authentication support, the service feels quick, and push notifications work great (as well as my personal spam database).

I haven’t thought about this very much since I completed the move, which is probably a good thing. 😎

Disclosure: I’m a Community Guardian at Automattic, parent company of WordPress.com. I also use WordPress.com for my personal sites. ↩
I didn’t realize Shaun Inman suspended sales and support for Fever and Mint in December 2016. ↩
This is my personal FastMail referral link. ↩

On my five-year Automattic anniversary (February 3rd, 2017), I started my three-month paid sabbatical. (Such a rad benefit!)

It was strange not signing into work. Some preparation and unforeseen events kept me preoccupied, but overall, it was quite enjoyable.

Many thanks to Automattic for the opportunity, and all my teammates for handling things!

Now, I’ll share some notes and highlights because midnight (PST) is soon. 😊

Mind map

Months before it started, I created a mind map with MindNode of all the things I might want to do. I reviewed it from time to time, and it was easy to add new ideas.

I knew I wouldn’t get to it all, but at least I had no excuse to be bored.

Jury duty

I spent about four days in jury selection. While I was being questioned, I told the attorney I was a Happiness Engineer. I…was dismissed. 😆

Move

On the second day of jury duty, I got a phone call from our landlord. They had to move back into their house, which meant we had to be gone in two months.

Amy found a place fairly quickly (not far from where we were), so we didn’t need those two months, and the move went smoothly. Mad props to her!

KonMari Method

Since we were moving, and we had a few weeks, I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo, then reduced my stuff by a lot. I have more to do, but ridding myself of clothes I no longer wear or like (for example) made the move much easier.

To Be Continued

A bit more to come about my sabbatical over the coming days. Stay tuned!

Tag: sabbatical

Closed my Media Temple account

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Sabbatical after five years at Automattic