Final Scores

I hope that I’ll keep this blog going, even if not as frequently as I have done so far. I set out to chronicle my activities and achievements during my six weeks of “Transformational Leave”, and as that time is now up, let’s review how I’ve done. It was a shame I was ill for a chunk in the middle of it, as that impacted the running challenge, but otherwise I’ve acquitted myself reasonable well, I think.

Let’s review the accomplishments:

• An excellent family adventure on the Canal du Midi, speaking a lot of French, bonding with grandparents and family friends, eating well and living a simple life far from the city.
• Completion of an entirely new and self-composed, 14,000 word, self-published book on product management, now available on Amazon:

• Study for and achievement of a foundational qualification in Information Security:

• Achievement of a paediatric first aid qualification, both for family usage and potential use in a pop-up childcare setting:

• Completed around 50 miles of the Capital Ring (9 of the 15 stages) by running (5 stages) and cycling (4 stages), from South Kenton clockwise to Crystal Palace:

• A lot of research via Ancestry into the family tree – I haven’t worked out how and with whom I’ll share what I’ve found yet, but I’ll post some of the findings separately in due course.
• Watched and completed three courses within TheTradeDesk’s “Trading Academy”:

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• A fair amount of Duolingo practice and listening to French podcasts – my new favourite is Le RDVTech.
• A little bit of miscellaneous DIY, only a bit of maintenance here and there rather than any Grand Projects I’d had in mind, but still.

In addition to the running, I probably could have done a bit more French, and I’d intended to start an Events company (which I still might do – it’s not like it’s very complicated to do so in UK). All in all, I feel like I’ve achieved a fair bit.

How have I been transformed? Well, I wasn’t expecting a damascene moment or epiphany. Well, I’m actually keen to get back to work and feeling rather grateful I have challenging, interesting employment, so that’s a win for the company. ;o)

I definitely intend to make sure I carve out a bit of time on a weekly basis for continuing self-development, and who knows? maybe even another book one day (or v2 of the one I’ve just written). And the canal holiday was so successful, I can imagine another one of those somewhere else in UK or France in the future.