Five lessons from sabbatical
The last two months have been such a gift. Thank you, subscribers, for sticking with me through this time of reflection, restoration, and play. My gratitude is immense.
I am cooking up a post on the logistics of sabbatical, for any of those who would like to create one for themselves. In the meantime, here are some of my biggest take-aways from the time off:
Working enables emotional bypass. As I feared, not working left me emotionally raw. I cried much more easily. I felt a wider range of feelings than I normally do and they were closer to the surface. This didn’t always feel good, but it definitely felt worthwhile. I had a hunch that I turned to work when I’m feeling anxious or powerless or sad (nothing like feeling effective at sending a few “urgent” emails to bury the weepies) and that was true. What was not true was that not having that outlet was terrible. It didn’t feel terrible. It felt sometimes hard and interesting and true.
We live at a pace and volume that cannot be metabolized. A lot of people asked me, “Where are you going on sabbatical?” I think they were imagining some tropical location, my feet in the sand, my cell phone locked in a drawer. In fact, I spent many hours of my sabbatical on my couch, reading books I have meant to read for years*, and watching webinars I signed up for and then quickly lost track of. I finally tended to the little plot of soil in front of my front window. I finally tried to make the dry beans piled up in little brown bags from our CSA box that were jammed in the cupboard. It felt wonderful to just tend to my physical world, my forgotten desires, my body’s natural pace. I didn’t need anything exotic to feel something exotic, which was the luxury of time and space to experience my actual life here, already as it is, waiting for me all this time.
I’ve been really wanting to try paddle boarding on the Russian River and I did it! All of us are indispensable humans and only a very small fraction of us are indispensable workers. I had a lot of stories in my head about how much my absence was going to impact my collaborators. I do a lot of solo work, of course, but also a lot of work with other people that I love. Unless they’re not telling me something, I was missed during these two months, but it appears that work marched on. Projects continued. Grants got written. Events got planned. And maybe even some of my collaborators learned things about themselves and their own capacities that they might not have known in my presence. Too many of us are walking around with stories about how we cannot possibly step away from work because the impacts would be cataclysmic. Taking time away is right-sizing for everyone.
We deserve divergent thinking. One of the real gifts of my sabbatical was getting off social media, moving my body a lot (swimming and hiking mostly), moving slowly through museums alone, and making a lot of weird art. I find such tremendous pleasure in being able to let my mind wander—cell phone and children somewhere else. I love my children. And I even love my cell phone; it keeps me connected to so many wonderful people and ideas. But my wholeness is dependent on hearing myself think, even and especially when that thinking is non-linear, surprising, and delighted.
An example of the weird art I made: a drawing/painting of the setting of my first job, the indy movie theater in Colorado Springs. Reflection is integrating and edifying. I re-read all of my books and some of my shorter form writing while asking myself: what have I done that I’m proud of? What wasn’t mine to do? what does this teach me about how I want to move forward? I worried that I would be embarrassed by the process of reading old stuff, and I certainly have a long list of critiques and regrets, but I was surprised to find that I also felt genuinely proud of my 25 and 30 and 35 year old selves. I discovered that there were certain obsessions that are threaded through all of my work, even though my books seem quite different on the surface. I always want to understand how generations evolve and change. I always want to disturb conventional wisdom. I always want to understand collective ethics through a lens of individual consciousness and action. It feels good to understand myself better—the things that have kept me awake and reaching for 20 years of writing professionally.
I’m so curious, what does this bring up for you? Have you taken time like this off and what were your learnings? Do you want to take this time off, but something is stopping you? What is it?
Big hugs. I’ve missed you all a lot.
*I read so many good books. I highly recommend all of these: Monsters by Claire Dederer, Wintering and Enchantment by Katherine May, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, Quickening by Elizabeth Rush, The Creative Act by Rick Rubin, The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty, Violeta by Isabel Allende, To Name the Bigger Lie by Sarah Viren, and The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander.
I haven't take a sabbatical, maybe not since maternity leave 30 years ago. But I have taken all social media off my cell phone for the last two years. And I try to remind myself to just be. Stay outside on a star-shot night and watch the moon rise. Notice beauty. Appreciate others, and the world. I am glad you hit the brakes on the "hectivity" of your life. You need it. It is good for you, the kids, and your co-workers. You got a break and everyone probably appreciated your extraordinary presence all the more. Welcome back.
Ah, you bring back so many memories with your honest, heart-full post, Courtney. Thank you for your insight and openness to this experience.
As college faculty, I was able to take a sabbatical in 2013-2014. It was the happiest year of my life. It started with dropping our youngest child off at college and then returning to our empty house to begin the process of rediscovering my spouse. We spent time alone together, had leisurely dinners or spent Saturdays in the garden. We deepened our relationship, catching up after our 22 hectic years of raising children. My daughter, calling home from college, quipped, "Instead of empty nest, it sounds like love nest over there!" I missed my children, but I had really missed my spouse, and even more, myself.
Perhaps the most incredible thing about this time was I spent it training for and walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain. I had been diagnosed 15 years earlier with a degenerative nerve disease that would slowly take away my ability to walk or use my hands. I was angry and grieving about how this was playing out in my numb feet, deteriorating muscles and terrible balance, and I wanted to take some time to figure out how I was going to integrate this disease into my reality, and not just resent and hate it. So I trained, sometimes with wonderful, supportive friends, but mostly alone, first walking 3-5 miles a day and working up to 15 miles a day with a full pack. I walked in beautiful places, sang, reflected, sobbed, prayed, listened to inspiring writers. After 9 months, I flew to Spain and did my solitary walk, every day relishing that I could do it and feeling deep gratitude for life and for the gift of this year of sabbatical. I found a kind of grace about my disease; it became a kind of teacher and friend. This time off changed my life. I hope the same for you.