{"id":11976,"date":"2014-09-01T10:27:31","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T14:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/?p=11976"},"modified":"2014-09-01T10:27:31","modified_gmt":"2014-09-01T14:27:31","slug":"september-sabbatical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/september-sabbatical\/","title":{"rendered":"September Sabbatical"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m taking the month of September as a sort of mini-sabbatical break. (A &#8216;sabbatical&#8217; is a term used in the academic world for a break from daily work to pursue travel and\/or learning, and then return re-energised and reinvigorated.)<\/p>\n<p>In my case, I&#8217;ll be stepping away from the internet for the month. Taking a step back from my online life is something I need for both personal and creative reasons after a very demanding year.<\/p>\n<h2>My Sabbatical Plans<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Travel<\/strong><br \/>\nDuring part of the month, we&#8217;ll be fulfilling one of my lifelong dreams of visiting wild orangutans in Borneo! I can&#8217;t even begin to tell you how exciting this is for me. I&#8217;ve never been to Asia before, so it&#8217;s a little nerve-wracking too, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I can&#8217;t pass up, and I&#8217;m sure it&#8217;ll be an amazing experience.<\/p>\n<p>For safety reasons, I&#8217;m not sure that sharing details of my trip in real-time would be wise. I&#8217;m minimising my online presence all month so it won&#8217;t be obvious exactly when I&#8217;m away, and I&#8217;ll fill you in with a Borneo wildlife report (here on my blog) when I&#8217;m back online in October. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Study<\/strong><br \/>\nFor the weeks when I&#8217;m not travelling, I&#8217;ll be working: spending quality time on creative growth and technical skill development. There are several exciting new PlanetJune projects in progress that need quiet undisturbed concentration so I can figure out how best to make them a reality. <\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re only a couple of days into this sabbatical (I actually started early, last Friday), and I&#8217;ve already replaced almost all the zip files for new orders in my shop with PDFs &#8211; a feature that will please smartphone and tablet users especially! I&#8217;ll continue converting the rest of the shop, and all past orders (and I&#8217;ll give you more details on this project once it&#8217;s completed). You&#8217;ll be able to see the other fruits of my labours throughout the rest of the year &#8211; more good things are in the pipeline! <\/p>\n<p><strong>Logistics<\/strong><br \/>\nSeptember is a poor choice for a break, business-wise: it&#8217;s the month when crochet sales start to pick up after the summer, and I usually try to capitalise on that with a strong new pattern release, but my <a href=\"\/igcrochet\">new book<\/a> should be keeping most people busy for a while, so I think PlanetJune will withstand a quiet September. I have a trustworthy reputation and a large <a href=\"\/shop\">back catalogue of quality patterns<\/a>, so regular new releases are less important than making sure that everything I publish meets the high standards I&#8217;ve set for PlanetJune.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>What does my Sabbatical mean for you?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>I <strong>will not<\/strong> be shipping any orders throughout September. You may still order crochet tools during this time, but I won&#8217;t ship them until the first week of October.<\/li>\n<li>Direct pattern sales through PlanetJune will be unaffected (instant digital downloads as always) but pattern orders through third-party venues (Etsy, ArtFire) may occasionally take longer than my usual 24-48 hours.<\/li>\n<li>I <strong>won&#8217;t<\/strong> be blogging, chatting in the PJ Ravelry group, or participating in social media on Twitter or Facebook, so don&#8217;t worry over my silence!<\/li>\n<li>I <strong>will<\/strong> be checking for personal messages in all those places every couple of days (even while I&#8217;m travelling), and monitoring my email, so I&#8217;ll still be able to offer help where required, but it may take longer than usual for you to receive a response, and I&#8217;ll try not to reply to anything except essential customer support requests until after my mini-sabbatical ends.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Getting Help<\/strong><br \/>\nIf you need any help, my recommendations are:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>For general PlanetJune assistance, check the <a href=\"\/faq\">PlanetJune FAQ<\/a> &#8211; always a good starting point.<\/li>\n<li>For crochet help, check my <a href=\"\/help\">master list of Crochet Tutorials<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>If your question isn&#8217;t answered by those, go and ask in the <a href=\"\/ravelry\">PJ Ravelry group<\/a> &#8211; you&#8217;ll find plenty of friendly and knowledgeable assistance there.<\/li>\n<li>If you&#8217;re still having difficulty, or have a technical problem with ordering\/downloading patterns (only I can help with that!), please <a href=\"mailto:june@planetjune.com\">email me<\/a>, and I&#8217;ll get back to you as soon as I can, but please remember I may be in the Bornean jungle and unable to respond quickly!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>My Goals<\/h2>\n<p>My hopes for this break are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>To rest, relax and recover while finding new inspiration in the nature of Borneo.<\/li>\n<li>To develop my technical skills so I can improve the PlanetJune shopping experience.<\/li>\n<li>To take quality time to make progress on innovative new designs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s a lot to fit into a month, even with minimal online distractions, but I don&#8217;t think I can afford to take a 2- or 3-month sabbatical at the moment!<\/p>\n<p>I hope you have a wonderful month. I&#8217;ll give your regards to the orangutans, and I&#8217;ll see you in October&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m taking the month of September as a sort of mini-sabbatical break. (A &#8216;sabbatical&#8217; is a term used in the academic world for a break from daily work to pursue travel and\/or learning, and then return re-energised and reinvigorated.) In my case, I&#8217;ll be stepping away from the internet for the month. Taking a step [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft-business"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11976\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}