The sabbatical starts now

Well, things are getting real. Today was my last day working at Choice Hotels as an Information Security Engineer. It hasn’t sunk in yet; my brain is still wandering off to thoughts of “what will come in over the weekend” and “wait who’s on call this weekend” and “what will be waiting in the queue Monday morning”. Guess it will take a while to shake off all these ingrained thought patterns.

So what comes next? Well, our visas are imminently being approved, so we’ll have to fly back out to LA to pick them up at the Spanish Consulate. Once that happens, things will move fast: booking our flights on Lufthansa, making the multi-day drive to Dallas, and flying to Europe. Why Dallas? Lufthansa has direct flights to Frankfurt, where we’ll spend the night then take a short flight to Barcelona the next day.

But then what? The problem isn’t so much what, but which. There’s so many things I want to focus on over the next year away from a 9-5: my photography (I’m getting more into street photography and Barcelona will be an amazing place for that), using AI to modify my photography, a LONG list of books to read, getting fluent in Spanish (I want to be able to sit at a bar and talk to a stranger - totally different situation than being able to read Spanish), picking up some Catalan, learning Japanese cooking techniques (because we’ll have access to plentiful, fantastic produce and seafood), writing, the list goes on.

But for now, we’re going to go celebrate at a place we’ve been wanting to check out here in Phoenix: Night Owl. We’ll let you know how it was.

We have visas

Let’s Go Phils!