I’m taking a year long creative sabbatical
It’s been a while since I updated my blog.
So I quit my job, sold almost everything I had, and decided to travel overseas for a year to take a creative sabbatical.
I talk about it here. I’ve been making videos of my projects and my travels, so you can subscribe on YouTube, and follow me on Instagram.
Basically, I was feeling burnt out, didn’t have enough time to work on my personal projects, and wanted to travel. I know it’s a pretty big decision, but I’ve quit my job multiple times before to work on personal projects. It’s just that this time, I’m doing it while I travel around to inexpensive countries.
WHERE
I’m starting my trip in Chiang Mai, Thailand, because it’s a digital nomad hub. It’s very safe, inexpensive, with good infrastructure.
After Thailand, I’ll probably hop around different parts of southeast Asia before heading to Europe. I don’t have a set itinerary, but here are some of the other countries I’m considering:
- Vietnam
- Indonesia
- Malaysia
- Cambodia
- Portugal
- Spain
- Czech Republic
- Hungary
- Croatia
PROJECTS
During my travels, I have several big creative projects I want to work on.
- make a T-shirt company
- write TV pilots
- make my animated web series
These are projects I’ve been wanting to start or have been slowly working on for years, and I’m so excited that I get this chunk of time to really focus on them.
The first project I’m focusing on is T-shirts. I’ve been wanting to put my drawings on shirts for years, but never had time to do it. My logic for starting with this is because I’ve been doing graphic design as my day job for years, so this would be an easy creative transition compared to jumping straight into writing. Also, it’ll get my drawing and graphic skills up to speed so I’ll be ready when I start my animated web series later.
Here’s one of my first T-shirt designs. It’s from an old drawing I did on a post-it note while I was in the Nickelodeon Writing Program. For the first 2 months of my sabbatical, this is what I’ve been working on. I’ve been drawing, designing, building my site, testing, and hopefully my website will be live soon!
Besides those big projects, I also want time to play around and experiment with photography and video. I want to draw more, read more.
And I want to enjoy and experience all the different places I’ll be traveling through. So far it’s been amazing, and I’m looking forward to what the future brings.