Usually, when I think about what I need to stay vigilant about in my own life, it's about things I should be doing, like keeping up with my daily exercise, or how I can improve in my career as a designer.
What I don't usually think about is what I shouldn't be doing. This is exactly what OG blogger Jason Kottke is doing. On Monday he announced he's taking a sabbatical:
So. The plan, as it currently stands, is to take 5-6 months away from the site. I will not be posting anything new here. I won’t be publishing the newsletter. There won’t be a guest editor either — if someone else was publishing here, it would still be on my mind and I’m looking for total awayness here. I’m planning on setting up a system to republish some timeless posts from the archive while I’m away, but that’s not fully in place yet. If you send me email (
please do!), it might take me awhile to read it and even longer to reply — I plan to ignore my inbox as much as I can get away with. I probably won’t be on Twitter but will be more active
on Instagram if you want to follow me there.
The goal of my time away from the site is resting, resetting, recharging, and figuring out what to do going forward. In
this NY Times feature,
Alexandra Bell said this about how art is made: “I need some space to think and live and have generative conversations and do things, and then I’ll make something, but I can’t tell you what it is just yet.” That’s the sort of energy I need to tap into for a few months.
If you don't know who Jason Kottke is, he's one of the original bloggers. He's been doing it since 1998. I'm not sure the exact number, but he's been making a living as a blogger for at least 15 years.
Jason is fortunate to be able to take a sabbatical. There's probably very few bloggers who can simply take a break from blogging and still pay the bills. I think this is a testament to years of dedication, hard work, and creativity Jason has put into his website and personal brand.
