How I Spent My Sabbatical

18 December 2022

I’m obliging here the many requests I’ve had to talk about my sabbatical from work this summer. This has nothing to do with drug discovery per se, so if that’s not your gig, consider this your “get out of jail free” card on this post. Skip on to the next one, and we’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming soon. If I can bend your ear for two more paragraphs though, I’ll discuss the macro benefits that long stretches away from work have for both employee and employer.

Sabbaticals are a great idea, and I wish more employers provided them in the drug discovery business. My sabbatical benefit was six weeks off accrued after five years of service. Six weeks off is time enough to achieve a deep relaxation, a re-centering that’s not accessible with normal vacation time in the US. No strings were attached, and I was actively encouraged to fully disengage from work and pursue whatever interests suited me. Sometimes the best way to see that all of those things you “have to do” at work aren’t really “have to” is to not have to do them for a while. Those things can come to define you, and they’re not who you are. Drug discovery is hard, and it tends to attract practitioners with true grit, who can work tenaciously for years for an uncertain, but likely unfavorable, outcome. As much as I love it, time away from the daily grind brought me back with a renewed sense of purpose and a better feel for the things that really matter. It’s the longest I’ve been disconnected from work in 20 years.

There are tangible benefits here for the employer, too. Foremost, what sane employer wouldn’t want their employees to come back deeply renewed? Every person I’ve talked to at my current job who took a sabbatical experienced the same feelings that I did. Of secondary but still crucial importance, sabbaticals are a good test of organizational resilience. When someone unplugs for a sabbatical, you don’t just vanish. There’s preparatory work first, central to which is building a sabbatical coverage plan. This plan describes how all of your job responsibilities are going to be covered by others in the organization while you’re away. This tends to be done in a distributive way so that many people are each picking up small portions of your responsibilities and nobody is unduly burdened. Lest someone think that’s unfair, what goes around comes around: when other people take their sabbaticals, you may be asked to help in the same way, and that’s fine. If a person finds themself with a unique ability or responsibility that they can’t unload, that’s a problem for the organization. Nobody should be indispensable, and if you can’t muster the strength to cover one person, no matter how senior or “important” they are, for six weeks… then you don’t have enough depth on the bench. Maybe that triggers some more hiring or training activities. All are good outcomes.

On to specifics. For my sabbatical, with my family I did something I’ve dreamed of doing my whole life: I took a cross-country road trip, from Connecticut to California and back again. We drove close to 9,000 miles and saw many things I thought I might never see. The USA is a diverse and beautiful country, and after swinging through 24 states and meeting a lot of people, I firmly believe there’s far more that unites us than divides us. It’s also full of all manner of wacky roadside attractions, and a big part of our driving ethos was to make short stops to see some of these weird and uniquely American things.

Here’s a photo of my one of my favorite kitschy Americana things on the whole trip. Do you know what it is, and where it is?

Six weeks is also time enough to be boring when describing it to other people, and I’m cognizant of that. So rather than drag this out in excruciating detail, I’ll use a light touch here. For the 43 sabbatical days (42 + July 4 holiday), I’ll give a point-to-point route, distance traveled, and a single photo from each day with no explanation. Some are landscapes, some are human-made oddities, some are sans people, some are with the family — all are meaningful to me.

My hope is that this approach satisfies some curiosity while also preserving some of the mystique of the trip. Maybe you’ll recognize the places, maybe you’ll wonder where that is. There’s no substitute for taking your own road trip, and I wish this journey upon anyone with the time and inclination to take it.

Lastly, feel free to use the comments or chat to tell me about your own adventures. Or if a picture resonates for you, tell me that too! Or if you’re dying from curiosity to know what something is, ask and I might answer.

Without further ado:

Day 1. Southbury, CT to Lamar, PA. 300 miles.

Day 2. Lamar, PA to Cleveland, OH. 275 miles.

Day 3. Cleveland, OH to Sandusky, OH. 53 miles.

Day 4. Sandusky, OH. 42 miles.

Day 5. Sandusky, OH to Davenport, IA. 440 miles.

Day 6. Davenport, IA to Lincoln, NE. 360 miles.

Day 7. Lincoln, NE to Scottsbluff, NE. 420 miles.

Day 8. Scottsbluff, NE to Rapid City, SD. 260 miles.

Day 9. Rapid City, SD with side trips to Minuteman Missile NHS, Badlands National Park, and Wall, SD. 180 miles.

Day 10. Rapid City, SD, with side trips to Lead, SD and Deadwood, SD. 90 miles.

Day 11. Rapid City, SD to Cody, WY via Devil’s Tower NM. 410 miles.

Day 12. Cody, WY. 5 miles.

Day 13. Cody, WY to Rexburg, ID via Yellowstone National Park. 220 miles.

Day 14. Rexburg, ID to Boise, ID via Craters of the Moon NM. 220 miles.

Day 15. Boise, ID to Bend, OR. 320 miles.

Day 16. Bend, OR to Redding, CA via Crater Lake National Park. 310 miles.

Day 17. Redding, CA to Reno, NV via Lassen Volcanic National Park. 230 miles.

Day 18. Reno, NV to Lee Vining, CA. 170 miles.

Day 19. Lee Vining, CA to Yosemite National Park. 75 miles.

Day 20. Yosemite National Park. 0 miles.

Day 21. Yosemite National Park to Marina, CA. 190 miles.

Day 22. Marina/Monterey, CA. 20 miles.

Day 23. Marina, CA to San Simeon, CA. 110 miles.

Day 24. San Simeon, CA to Burbank, CA. 240 miles.

Day 25. Universal Studios. 12 miles.

Day 26. Burbank, CA to Anaheim, CA. 50 miles.

Day 27. Disneyland. 0 miles.

Day 28. Disney’s California Adventure. 0 miles.

Day 29. Anaheim, CA to Sedona, AZ via Joshua Tree National Park. 490 miles.

Day 30. Sedona, AZ. <10 miles.

Day 31. Sedona, AZ. <10 miles.

Day 32. Sedona, AZ. <10 miles.

Day 33. Sedona, AZ to Moab, UT and Arches National Park. 410 miles.

Day 34. Moab, UT to Denver, CO. 370 miles.

Day 35. Denver, CO to Topeka, KS. 550 miles.

Day 36. Topeka, KS to Springfield, IL. 370 miles.

Day 37. Springfield, IL to Columbus, OH. 380 miles.

Day 38. Columbus, OH to McHenry, MD. 270 miles.

Day 39. McHenry, MD to Southbury, CT. 440 miles.

Day 40-41. Southbury, CT. Recovery day, no photos.

Day 42. Steep Rock Preserve, Washington, CT.

Day 43. Hubbard Park, Meriden, CT.