Space to Reset

This summer I took my first sabbatical. It was a relatively new policy and I didn’t have much time to plan unless I wanted to push it into next year. By the time it was official, the kids already had their own summer obligations, which changed the nature of the trip. Instead of one big adventure, it became a set of smaller journeys stitched together with my family.
I spent a month in northern Europe – France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Ireland. The focus was staying near friends and family while also seeing new places. I wanted to work on small projects, so this was less of a tourist trip (for me) and more intentionally relaxed. I started in Lille with my youngest, then we moved in stages to the Belgian coast where my wife and eldest joined us, across to Leuven, then north to The Hague, and finally a few short days in Ireland with just my eldest to visit family. Parts of the region were familiar, but most of the towns and cities we saw were new. We took the time to stay in each place; less sight-seeing and more on the walking and exploring.
The irony is not lost on me that, despite being Irish, I never spent much time in Europe before I moved to the US more than twenty years ago. What struck me most this time was the ease of getting around; trains criss-cross borders with none of the drama of air travel. The affordability and speed make it feel like a different world compared to the worn-down, underfunded rail we accept in the US. I was also struck again and again by the multilingualism of Europe. To watch people switch casually between French, Dutch, and English is humbling. I think that most English-speaking countries, including the US, UK, and Ireland, miss that richness. At the same time, I was grateful that English carried me through so easily, and appreciative of the patience people showed.
One of the unexpected gifts was solo time with my kids. Because of the way schedules worked out, I had almost a week alone with each of them. They’re older teens now, and one is starting her last year of high-school before college. I’m acutely aware that once they leave, the time I’ll have with them across the rest of my life is only a fraction of what I’ve already had. So I tried to treat this as a rare opportunity: to listen more, to strengthen our relationship, to just hang out and notice who they are becoming.
With my youngest, I loved watching them take the lead in small ways – asking for tables in restaurants in their best French, ordering meals for both of us without hesitation. It was their idea, their confidence, and it was a joy to see. With my eldest, I watched her explore independence in new ways – spending a day in Amsterdam with friends. Once, the idea of my child roaming Amsterdam unsupervised would have terrified me. This time, it just felt natural.
Being in different countries also gave me sharper contrast with life in New York. I love the city, but the cracks in public policy and infrastructure are clearer when you step away. It might sound like a list, but streets that were cleaner, bike lanes that felt safe and sensible, public transportation that just worked, wind turbines turning steadily across the landscape, solar panels everywhere. People seemed more at ease, and there was a pride in preserving culture and history rather than paving over it. None of it was utopia, but it underscored how much of what is taken for granted elsewhere becomes an ideological fight in the US (Lets chat about the good thing that is congestion pricing for example). We talk about why we can’t have nice things; elsewhere, they just exist.
Workwise, I detached completely but didn’t unplug from the wider world. That was intentional. I let myself start projects without pressure to finish them. I scraped the MTA site for real-time subway data, tested some APIs, built some mini-services, tinkered with AI models, and wandered down technical rabbit holes that served no agenda but my own curiosity. None of them got finished, and that was the point. There was a joy in coding again – the feeling of pulling on a thread just to see what unravels, with no need to explain or justify the time spent. It was a relief to let curiosity lead without a deadline or a deliverable waiting at the other end.
The sabbatical wasn’t about a big trip or a neat project. It was about shifting perspective. I came back grateful, a little reset, and hoping to carry some of that looseness into the year ahead. The gift was time – with my kids, with new places, and with ideas that didn’t need to go anywhere.