There Are Four Different Types of Creative Sabbaticals. Which One Works For You?
Take my super cool quiz and find out.
Yes, four. Because our lives aren’t all operating on the same gear all at the same time. What you might need in this season of your life is probably not what you’ll need in the next. Firing off some mediocre “HeRe’S HoW tO tAkE a CrEaTiVe SaBbAtIcAl.pdf” was out of the question.
There’s the kind where you go away and finish the manuscript. The kind where you go away to figure out what the manuscript even is. One where you stay home and finally claim the corner of the house that’s been everyone else’s but yours. And there’s the kind where you stop making things alone and find the other women who don’t change the subject when you bring up your work.
Because we often think of a creative sabbatical, or a residency or retreat, as something you have to fly halfway around the world for, I built a quiz to dispel the myths AND to help you figure out which one you need. It took me approximately forever and three platform meltdowns to get it live, but it’s here.
But why did you go through all of that shit for a quiz, Kelly? Like, really why?
I’m currently on a sabbatical. The first part of it was meticulously planned and coincided with a cross-country move back to PA, and three months in Europe. But the part I’m on now?
Well. The whole shooting match started with significant loss and ended with me trying to figure out who I am outside of everyone else’s lives, demands, and priorities. On this side of it, I learned two things:
I needed to make this my life, because going back into the trenches is a full body fuck no. And not because I want to be a lazy-ass sleeper-inner (although I do have a night owl disposition).
Most of the women I know are operating on creative fumes and have been for years, and that makes me so sad.
These women aren’t lazy-ass sleeper-inners either. Or even uncommitted. They’re cramming fifteen minutes of their creative life into the margins of everyone else’s. They have a manuscript that’s survived four house moves and two career changes and still isn’t finished. They’ve been making things in secret for so long they’ve almost convinced themselves it doesn’t count. They’ve dreamt of running away with the circus just so they could finish the goddamn thing.
I’ve been all of these women. Every. Single. One.
Every real conversation I have eventually gets here, to the sabbatical/residency/retreat question.
So. What’s a girl to do but start building a place for women just like me? A dedicated website (because I need another dedicated email address like a hole in the head), a quiz, and four sabbatical guides that address a specific creative need at a particular time in your life. Not some generic “take time for yourself and light some candles around your bubble bath” manifesto. An actual field guide for the sabbatical that would change things for you, specifically, and how to go about it.
Dwell - when you need to create room inside the life you’re living and claim a corner of the house that’s just yours.
Depart - When you know you’ve got to get the hell out of Dodge to create.
Gather - When you’re ready (even with mad trepidation) to finally be witnessed as an artist and join a coven of creative baddies.
Roam - When you’ve got to go somewhere, anywhere, to get away from the noise so you can create and hear yourself think again. And in doing so, summon the muse.
Building a quiz is, it turns out, an absolute nightmare
After months of toiling, and enough cursing to make a sailor blush, I did consider just sending you a very long email with a note at the end to reply and tell me which sabbatical you needed and that I’d write back.
I did not do that. You’re welcome.
I needed to go through the whole process because I learned a ton. Like the reason why most sabbaticals never happen, fall flat in the middle, or fail entirely. It’s that women take the wrong one. They book a solo trip when they actually need a community. They try to finish the manuscript when they haven’t even figured out what they’re making yet. They rearrange their external life when the real problem is that they’ve never claimed space inside the one they already have.
None of this is about preference, your MBTI type, or your natal astro chart. It’s about what you need right now to invite your creative practice back into your life, and prioritize your own art. Life’s noise, considered.
The quiz is seven questions. You get a three-page field guide for your result. It lays out what your sabbatical type means, what it looks like in practice, and what it’s actually asking of you. If you want to go deeper, there’s a full guidebook for each type. Because of course I wrote four guidebooks. Like I’m going to leave you hanging with some one-paragraph Buzzfeed description of why you’re a particular type of sandwich. Those were bangers, but this is way fucking better.
If you haven’t already…
Post Script ~ If you take it and the result feels wrong, I genuinely want to know. Comment below or reply to this email. I read everything.