Taking a break to rest

It’s a beautiful, sunny (rare) day in Seattle and I’m heading back from a picnic with my friend that always drags me out of my house. It’s a fairly long ride, so I’ve decided to stop waiting for the perfect moment and just begin writing this article right now. 

Not to be rude; first, hello there! 👋🏾 

How are you? I hope you’re doing great.

I’m well myself, can’t complain. 

To cut right to the chase, as you can tell from the title of this article, I’m taking a break. For how long, you might ask? Well, about 3 months. Let’s take it as a little summer break. In this article, I’ll be sharing a little backstory and more context about this much needed break. 

In 2021, I uprooted my life from Nigeria where I was born and raised and decided to move to the US for grad school. My one goal at the time was very simple: get my Master’s degree. That was “almost” all I dreamt about and worked towards right from 2019 when I first conceived the dream up until 2023 when, by God’s grace, that dream became a reality. 

For 4 good years, I had worked and toiled for something. And I finally got it. 

Now, you can imagine the “dopamine crash” I experienced after that. 

I struggled with setting any personal goals for months after my graduation. I had just moved to a new city, started a new role, was adjusting to my new life and beginning to build my safety nets again. I was pretty overwhelmed. After months of trying, I just decided to take the rest of 2023 off as a brief sabbatical with respect to personal goals. I was definitely going to feel better in 2024, set my goals, crush them, unno, all of those structured plans. I spent my December reading the 12 week year, determined to begin working hard at my goals from January 2nd after I returned home from my Christmas vacation. 

Well, I returned from that vacation to discover that my laptop had packed up. I hadn’t traveled with it and upon my return, it just refused to boot. This set me back in ways I would have never imagined. Spent quite some time visiting the Apple Store, getting money for the repairs, and finally getting it fixed. This took months to sort out and in that period, I was, maybe, “stagnant”. At least, that’s how I felt. I started losing motivation and decided to extend my sabbatical till the end of Q1 2024. However, Q1 ended and I still hadn’t fixed my spoiled laptop or renewed my motivation. During this  time, I was still publishing on my blog every month as I had set out to, but I was really struggling. 

Why was I struggling?

This is something I had to think about for a few weeks, and I have finally been able to identify some possible reasons. First, I use my blog to share my journey and things that I learn and find interesting. Well, since I started working in the industry full-time last year, I spend a lot of my time doing company work, and this is something I cannot share on my blog. It’s been a few months settling into my new role, finding my rhythm and struggling to make time to learn new things personally that I want to share. My laptop packing up also put a halt to my personal learnings and projects as well. I also feel like I’m slightly struggling with burnout and need to take a step back. Sharing on my blog had become more of a routine, which was great for consistency, but I need to get back to the drawing board and re-define my whys. There’s only so much you can give if you don’t personally keep refueling the source.

The beautiful thing about finishing school is that you personally no longer have to do anything just because someone said so or because you had to do it at that time. There’s no academic calendar, timetable, assignment deadlines, curriculum, course schedule. Nothing. It’s now up to you to define what is important to you, what you like, and what you want to spend your time doing. It’s such a huge phase of finding yourself again.

So now, what’s next?

I have decided to take the next three months to realign and figure out my bearings again. I can’t pour out from an empty cup, so it is important that I refill. I also intend to use the time away to live life offline. Summer is a very beautiful season in Seattle with lots of sunny days. I hope to spend more time outside, exploring, in nature, with my friends and loved ones, sitting with my thoughts, and just resting more. In addition to this, I also want to get back to studying personally, finding things I care about, solving problems, learning, building, and pushing myself — sans any pressure to share at the moment. With the evolution of AI, it has shaped a lot of things I initially thought I wanted or planned to do. This is also something I hope to tackle in the next few months.

When can you expect me back?

I hope to be back with an article out in September. The proposed article is an introduction to research for new and intending grad students, with no prior research experience, that might be joining research labs in the Fall. In the meantime, my blog will still be up, you can catch up on old blog posts and share them with anyone you think might need them as well. I will also periodically repost some of my previous articles on my socials. I’m really looking forward to taking this step back, getting some rest, coming back with renewed vim and motivation, and the amazing articles I hope to share on my return. I also really appreciate your patience at this time.

If you made it to this point, thank you. Writing this article was harder for me than I anticipated. I dealt with a lot of emotions and feelings personally over the course of writing this. I really wanted to be vulnerable and honest in all my words. 3 weeks, lots of breaks in between, and a trip later, I’m so glad I could finally complete it. 

I hope you have a beautiful summer, prioritize rest as much as you can, spend time with people that matter, filter out noise, challenge yourself and push your limits. In planning for after my break, I am still open to receiving article suggestions, comments, and questions via the comment section below or via email: contactaniekan at gmail dot com which I check frequently. I hope I have been able to offer value and be of help in some way to you, via my blog or any other medium, and I hope that I’m able to keep sharing, inspiring, and helping in due time.

Until next time.

Thank you for reading.

Aniekan

P.S: I just couldn’t resist the urge to add this photo. This is my mood this summer — sitting in nature, minding my business, doing what makes me happy, finding myself again, and relaxing 😎.