“Carry me away. Let the tide take me where it will. Let’s see how long it takes to figure out my next career step.”

I thought for my first blog post I’d review the book that really clarified my thinking on what I was trying to achieve in taking a year off work.

In taking a 12 month break from paid work I knew I didn’t want to spend it sitting around watching TV, having long boozy lunches and getting pedicures and massages. (Although it would be OK to do that some of the time.)

I wanted this time to be meaningful, to have purpose, to be structured.

Like most people these days I went straight to Google for the answers.

Reboot Your Life: Energize Your Career and Life by Taking a Break by Catherine Allen, Nancy Bearg, Rita Foley, and Jaye Smith helped find these answers.

Reboot Your Life is an easy to follow guide to how and why taking a break from work can help people to re-examine their priorities and re-energise their lives. Written by four women who have taken sabbaticals and drawing on the experiences hundreds of others Reboot Your Life is a book you can read from cover to cover or just dip into the chapters that you need.

Reboot Your Life talks about the reasons for and benefits of taking a career break, how you can fund your time away, the heart of a sabbatical – reconnecting with yourself and your world and exploring opportunities, re-entering the workplace and living a lifelong sabbatical.

It is somewhat targeted at mid-career Americans and some of the advice is not really relevant to those of us from the rest of the world or those starting or part-way in their careers. However, in saying that there enough guidance for people to take something away.

“The decision to take a sabbatical – to answer that call to oneself – is a huge step. There’s no question about it. The worries that can cloud people’s minds and tighten their guts as they contemplate taking a break are real and practically universal. At the same time, sabbaticals are as old as time and are a natural rhythm of life. Knowing that and learning a little more about sabbaticals – like their cultural context and great outcomes – may make it easier to decide to take one.”

Reboot Your Life: Energize Your Career and Life by Taking a Break, Catherine Allen, Nancy Bearg, Rita Foley, Jaye Smith, New York, Beaufort Books, 2011, First edition, ISBN 978-0-8253-0564-1