Tag: rest

Time to slow down

December 12th, 2025

I’ve been traveling a lot the past few weeks — Albuquerque for my cousin’s wedding, Ireland for a leadership meetup for work, New York City for fun with my husband, and Spain for our operations team meetup. The travel was exciting, but I’m glad to finally be home. With the sniffles, but home.

I’ve felt frazzled over the past few weeks with all of the travel, Thanksgiving, both kids’ birthdays, lots of new stuff at work, and Christmas on the way. My brain has been working overtime and I haven’t had the creative energy to write or blog. I feel that frazzle easing a bit now as I move some things to the completed column.

White lights twinkle on our Christmas tree and front porch rail. Snow glitters on the ground. We’ve brought the holiday decorations out of storage, and steam rises from a reindeer coffee mug by my side. Our daughter is asleep in her bed here at home. She drove up yesterday from Florida, her third semester of college complete, and opened birthday presents at 9:30 last night after starting the day with an exam then driving 10 hours. Her birthday was Wednesday, and it was the first time in her life we haven’t been with her for it. She had a fun day with friends in St. Augustine, so it’s not a sad thing. Just weird. For us.

One cat lays on my lapboard, snuggled against my belly with her chin resting on my forearm as I type; the other lays on the seat cushion behind me. We had a fire last night, and this morning I’m warm in my soft sweatshirt, sweatpants, and thick wool socks. I am cozy. I can feel my body relaxing into the beauty of winter and Christmas. With one of our babies here at home and the other on his way in a few days, my heart feels peace.
How to live

July 7th, 2025

This is my final week on sabbatical. Over these past months, I’ve gotten a taste of what it’s like to be in complete control of my time, and wow, it was glorious.

Before sabbatical, I wondered if I’d feel unmoored without work. I wondered if I’d feel like I lost my identity. I wondered if I’d not know what to do with myself. I worried I might try to do too much, and it’d rush by too fast as a result, and I’d go back to work feeling like I still needed a break. I worried I might do too little, and I’d become sloth and useless. I worried I’d feel like I needed to be productive with the time off because I felt guilty for having it.

What happened was that I learned to enjoy life, with gratitude instead of guilt. I learned to allow myself more time to do things that add richness to my life: I lengthened my pool time so I wasn’t rushing through my swim workouts, I watched wildlife in our garden for long stretches instead of quick glances, I spent a week with friends in Utah instead of squeezing a visit in on a weekend (or not visiting at all), I stayed in France after my husband and son went home. At home, I visited every coffee shop in town and sipped from stoneware instead of paper cups. I walked to shops instead of driving to them. I napped.

I learned to pay attention to my motivation for doing a thing — am I doing it because I want to do it, or because I feel like I should do it? I did the things I truly wanted to do, and eliminated the things I didn’t. I cooked only when I felt inspired and wanted to cook. I gravitated to swimming and walking, not to bicycling, and that is okay.

I’m in my 50s, and therefore in the second half of life. Retirement is likely on the horizon in the next dozen years. Sabbatical was a test run for what life feels like without work to occupy every day: will I feel empty? Will I be bored? Restless? Or will retirement be wonderful?

It will be wonderful. I can’t wait.

In this final week off, I’m going to soak up this time as much as I can. I’m going to read on the couch during the day and not feel bad about it. I’m going to nap if I feel sleepy. I’m going to hang out in coffee shops and watch the world go by. If I feel moved to, I might think about what I can take with me from my sabbatical life into my working life. It would be a shame to wait for sabbaticals and retirement to live and enjoy. I’ve got my health and energy now, I don’t want to squander it.
Sabbatical!

April 12th, 2025

I’m writing this from a hotel room bed. It’s not even 5am. I have no obligations until noon when the Uber comes to carry my teammates and me to the airport, but I can’t sleep because I feel like a kid on Christmas day. Today is the last day of my team meetup in Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. It is also the first day of my sabbatical. For the next three months, my time is mine to rest, visit friends, garden, travel, and create.

It feels unsettling to begin a sabbatical right now. I have survivor’s guilt after recent layoffs, and I can’t help the niggling worry of, “Is it irresponsible of me to take time off now?” I try to self-soothe with math: 3 months of paid time off in one chunk sounds really expensive; spread over the 5 years for sabbatical eligibility, it equates to an extra 2.4 weeks of vacation per year. That feels more reasonable to my worrying mind.

One of the podcasts I listen to put out an episode on sabbaticals just last week: Why You Should Take a Few Months Off Work (Live from SXSW) from the Happiness Lab. I was eager to listen because I knew that the host, who is a Happiness researcher, would cover the benefits of sabbaticals for personal well-being, but I suspected she would also go into the benefits for the organization providing the sabbatical. And she does. One of the biggest benefits of sabbaticals for a company, in addition to the happiness, creativity, and rejuvenation of employees when they return, is that sabbaticals result in resiliency for the organization. While I’m away, a teammate will step into the role of leading our support operations team. They’ll bring fresh ideas, build leadership skills, and become an additional source of institutional knowledge.

This makes me feel less selfish or guilty or worried or other uncomfortable feelings I feel. I don’t want to dismiss those feelings, but I also want to appreciate this unbelievable gift and not spend all my time fretting. That would defeat the purpose entirely! I’m not going to return in three months feeling refreshed and ready to bring my best to work if I spend this time worrying or decide not to take the sabbatical and burn myself out.

I’m feeling a lot of feelings right now, is the tl;dr. But the feelings I feel most are gratitude and excitement. I’ve been looking forward to this sabbatical for about two years, and I’ve been counting down the days like a student counts towards summer vacation or child counts towards Christmas day. And now the time is here.

Two truckloads of mulch will be delivered to my house on Monday. I’ll spend my first week in the garden. When I shovel mulch, pull weeds, and dig in the dirt, I become totally absorbed. The work is physical, and it clears my mind. I expect getting into my body next week will provide a clean divider between work and not work.

I expect to blog more now that I’ll have the time and space to. I’ve got some fun stuff planned: gardening, a trip to see friends, friends visiting me, and travel with my husband and our son to Paris, Lille, and Brussels to visit our daughter while she studies abroad. I’m sure I’ll find fun stuff to write about through all of that.

Meanwhile, here are some peacocks from the Dominican Republic. See you soon!

Daily writing prompt
Jot down the first thing that comes to your mind.
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Respite

October 20th, 2021

I have been going non-stop this week. Work got frantically busy with a bunch of stuff happening all at once, things are breaking or need updating all over our house, the kids have appointments, paperwork needs filled out, the swim team needs our volunteer time, and every waking minute has had something crammed into it.

Until this moment. I had an extraordinarily productive day at work today. On my swim this morning, I almost quit on every lap because I felt panicky. My to-do list raced through my head on repeat, and it gathered weight with every repetition. I just did not know how I was going to get to everything I needed to do, and the thing I needed most was time, which I was wasting precious minutes of in the pool.

But! I finished my swim, put every item on my list into my calendar, set strict time limits on the many deadline-driven things I needed to complete, told my team I was likely going to be slow to respond to stuff because I had to focus, and put my head down and barreled through. I got through two big looming things that had to be taken care of before I take care of an even bigger looming thing that also has to be taken care of and that I need to dedicate the rest of my week to. I’m shocked I got all of today’s tasks done, to be honest. I thought I’d carry over at least one of the big things. I am gleeful that I did not.

Now my brain is fried, but I’m able to relax for the first time so far this week. I’m finally sitting alone with my thoughts, not running around, not doing anything but writing.

My cherry Bubly fizzes next to me in the stillness of our empty house. I hear the clock tick as the sun sinks below the leafless Bradford pears across the street. My husband and daughter are at the pool, our son is napping at 7pm, and our cats have full bellies and are not yowling at me or head-butting me or climbing on my keyboard. It’s my night to cook dinner but our oven is broken, so I bought sushi for my husband and daughter, I’m going to eat leftovers, and who knows what our son will do. No cooking, no dishes. My body and brain are exhausted, and I can just sit here in the quiet, taking my rest. Maybe I’ll be ready for the final big looming thing tomorrow, but I’m not going to worry about that today.

Tag: rest

Time to slow down

How to live

Sabbatical!

Respite