I'll call the next 6 months of my life my Jerry Maguire phase. I've saved enough money to really work on the core skills at building out my most passionate ideas about computer science. I've actually partially written a mission statement. I'm doing lots of reading in hopes of finding the inspiration to finish the whitepaper.

Last year, I read Lou Gerstner's book, 2 books on Amazon.com, and Steven Covey's 8th Habit. This year I've read the 37Signals book - Getting Real, the Chad Fowler book My Job Went To India, The World is Flat, Freakonomics, Blink, and now I'm reading Malcolm Gladwell's other book, The Tipping Point. I believe I can take the ideas in these books, synthesize them into my own improvement, and spit out a seminal work on IT culture that will govern how I would run a company if given the opportunity. Along the way, I am building out a few of the projects I'm working on-  some are paid, some are on my own dime.

My simple plan is to 1. Build prototypes and tools and skills 2. Network with others 3. Freelance enough to keep my savings at a slow burn. After 6 months of doing this (that's about as much money as I have for my sabbatical), I'll spend the summer in the Philippines looking for people I can train to work for me. I figure, if I can do 20 or 30 jobs at $20/$30 dollars per hour, I can build a small team to do the same. I have to set the stage first. Afterwards, I can take a job that pays less than what I made this year and still make the same money. After a while, if the culture is right, I believe this company I have in mind will continue to grow.

I've seen companies with a terrible culture grow to $1 billion a year in transactions so imagine what a company born from a collection and synthesis of the best ideas can be.

IT workers of the world unite in this mission.  Save up enough money to take a 6 month sabbatical. If you've worked 10 or more years with no break, you deserve one. Take all the ideas you've been thinking about and written in your journal and put them to work. Network with like minded folks who are doing the same. Create an economy, a subculture. In some respects it's already happening and it's called the open source movement. You're not alone. Believe in yourself and what you can achieve in 6 months.

I hope others look at this blog, follow me along this phase of my career, and a trend starts. I don't know where I am going but I am not afraid and excited to see where this all will lead. I will try to hold off on job offers that are coming in unitl my 6 months of sabbatical are complete.