I deleted Slack for a whole month and only two people noticed...

...no, it wasn't anyone at work. It was my two children, and the three of us spent one of the best months together. Let me tell you why.

Talk Shoppe gives every team member a four-week paid sabbatical once they hit the five-year mark. I took mine this Summer, after five and a half years at the company, right as my boys, ages 7 and 10, were home for summer break. Not only did I get real, uninterrupted “Mom time” with them, I also didn't pay for a single week of camp that whole month. Working parents know exactly what that math looks like.

Not one person at the company expected me to be reachable while I was out. But that's true of a normal vacation too, as nobody pings me then either. A genuine "quick answer" need is rare, and I'm not on call for anything life-or-death. Being unreachable is pretty much the standard every time I take time off. The only thing different this time is that I actually acted like it.

I've taken plenty of vacations with Slack and email sitting right there on my phone anyway, telling myself I was just glancing, not really working. This time, before I logged off for the month, I deleted both apps. Not muted. Deleted. It was the first time I'd ever actually done that.

The first few days felt strange - almost like I had phantom limb syndrome! My hand kept going to my phone out of sheer habit, looking for something to check, and finding nothing there. It felt less like relaxing and more like withdrawal, if I'm honest.

Then somewhere around day four or five, it flipped. I stopped being off and started actually being where I was. At the beach. On a walk downtown during our staycation weeks. In the middle of my kids' actual sentences instead of catching the gist and moving on.

One afternoon we made a project out of hitting every sporting goods store in the city. We are all-in on travel baseball at the moment, and my boys want to try every bat in every store, even though they have zero need for a new bat. Normally I'd have given that twenty minutes, phone in hand, already thinking about getting us out the door. This time we just stood there. All afternoon. Bat after bat after bat. No rush, no phone, nowhere else I needed to be.

That's the part I didn't expect this sabbatical to hand me. When I first learned about this benefit, I pictured something bigger, more grandiose, like backpacking somewhere far off, the kind of trip a few of my coworkers have taken on theirs. I worried a staycation with a 7 and 10 year old wouldn't really count as a "real" sabbatical next to that. Closer to the actual time, I was also worried I hadn't planned enough. What on Earth was I going to do for days on end with no structure?!

Turns out, none of that was the point. I've rested before, plenty of times. This was different. It was just "being", with nothing pulling at me. You don't realize how rare that is until you get it back after years of running without it.

My oldest started his last year of elementary school in August. By my next sabbatical, five years from now, he'll have his driver's permit. I don't fully know what to do with that math yet. I just know I'm glad I actually showed up for this one instead of being halfway there and calling it a vacation.

As I'm starting to plan for our Fall vacation, I realize I'm down to my standard week away instead of the Sabbatical four. I don't know yet if I can pull off leaving my phone behind for that too, but I want to. We didn't leave the country this Summer. We didn't do anything postcard-worthy. But my boys got a version of me that was actually there for all of it. And that is worth everything.