Awesome that you had The Talk! Presenting it as a sabbatical is a great middle ground in my opinion. Who knows? It is always possible you will actually want to return to work. ;-)
How does it feel to have that out in the open now?
I feel very well now, because I can from now on talk openly about selling my house.
Yesterday (when I was still in the closet), I was talking Norwegian to a French coworker who is learning Norwegian, but understands it a bit poorly.
Me: I have been driving the hanger, cleaning out the trees I removed from the garden and a lot of stuff from our home.
She: Why are you cleaning out your place?
Me (Feeling uncomfortable): We removed some trees that were blocking out the view from our home. (which it partly true).
She (didn't understand what I said and just made a guess): Are you going to sell your home? (A pretty good guess).
Me (even more uncomfortable): I just said we that removed some trees that were blocking our view.
Next time I will be able to answer more truthfully.
I am not mentioning the "sabbatical" to my coworkers before my manager makes it public, or let's me do it.
In the past few years, I have mentioned the concept of early retirement to some of my coworkers. If they ask me if this is it, I am still gonna say that we are going to take a year off first. That has DH requested from me, because Norway is a small world and he wants that to be his own story. But these few coworkers might understand how it really works.
I also feel a bit giddy today.