In December 2015, during my company’s annual meeting, I presented a PowerPoint that started with the following sentence:

Pedro is leaving the company, now what?

Initially, everyone thought it was another one of those antics that I like to do. However, in a few seconds, they realized that it was a serious matter… I was announcing that during 2016 I would not be available to anyone (neither employees nor clients), because I wanted to dedicate more time to writing and developing the company’s first online store.

– Are you leaving the company? I don’t understand what you mean by that! – said one of the collaborators.

– I’m taking a gap year! I don’t intend to go to Tibet to try to understand who I am or what I want to do in the next few years … I will close myself for a year in my office to finish writing the book and create an online store … I will not answer the e- mails and I will put my cell phone number to forward to the company’s landline! – I said.

For a year, everyone tried to prove that I was crazy and that I was doing something unthinkable and unforgivable, both personally and professionally. But I had so much fun taking my decision to the end!