[karlkatzke]

If you have the desire to build something and you need a sabbatical, have you considered a volunteer service trip of some sort? It need not take you out of the country; I haven't looked recently, but last time I was considering something similar there were week+ long projects building homes for the poor in New Orleans, building or maintaining hiking trails all along the Appalachian Trail and many other forest projects, and all kinds of other things local and national. You may need to acquire supplies and transport yourself to a pickup site, but they typically provide food and tools.

This does three things: It gets you out of the office and away from your email. (When doing what I call an "away trip" -- yes, nerdy -- I have either put my smart phone's SIM card into a dumb phone or given everyone a separate phone number to reach me at a prepaid cell phone. I leave the phone off the majority of the time, and instruct them to leave a voicemail and I will call them back when I get around to it.) It gets you away from the cycle of HN, Reddit, and other news sites. And last, it gives you something tangible that you can look back and say that you built.

Trips I've done have included building mountain bike trails, gathering a large group of friends from a small HN-like forum to help clean out a forum member's estranged mother's house. She'd become a hoarder in her old age, and filled a beautiful 3,000 sq. ft. mansion in rural Illinois with ... stuff. But every piece had to be sorted and evaluated, because there were many collector's items and valuable things hidden, like silver dollars from the early 1900s stuffed into a pillow that seemed strangely heavy. Eight people sorted and moved enough stuff out to fill 40 cu. yd. dumpster per day, and fixed enough of the plumbing issues to prevent further damage to the house. It was pretty filthy work, it was insanely exhausting, and it created a very tight bond between some special people. Seeing, and having the community's support for it, left me refreshed and ready to return to work.