“So you got want you wanted…”
At the beginning of my sabbatical, I laid out this daily calendar and filled my days with plans for what would do. Let’s just say that was a touch optimistic.
This the first installment of a series reflecting on a sabbatical that ended one year ago. It will run each Wednesday through the summer.
Traditionally, academics are eligible for sabbaticals every seven years or so. The practice, ostensibly, is to set aside a time for scholars to renew their studies, pursue projects that teaching does not allow them to focus on solely, and to recharge for their work in the classroom.
Put another way, it’s not a vacation. It’s a time for the work that’s usually fit in around the edges of the myriad shifting commitments be teaching and facilitating the business of the academy.
It’s also a phenomenal opportunity to choose what you want to work on along with how and when you will do that work. It is, as I said when I received my confirmation letter, the Golden Ticket. Truly, it’s something most writers never get and not a privilege I take lightly.
Which means it’s also a lot of pressure.
When I applied for the time away, I said I wanted to finish a novel that has been eluding me for eight years. I was also “encouraged” to complete an academic task of creating an annotated bibliography regarding literacies in digital literature, a field I find myself increasingly working within.
Spoiler alert: neither of those projects is done.
Double spoiler: I’m totally fine with that, even with the fact that the bibliography will likely never be done at all.
Completion just wasn’t the theme of my sabbatical, even as I completed a ton of work. Wrote more than 100,000 words and finally—maybe—figured out that novel.
No, the point of my solo hike through my own interests was to see just how estranged I’d become from what matters to me in the day-to-day of my teaching. When I slowed down and looked around, I realized I wasn’t doing what makes me a better than decent instructor. I wasn’t doing.
This isn’t to say that the lack of total progress didn’t (or doesn’t) bother me at all. I actually had to wait closer to nine years for my first chance at sabbatical, so I felt extra pressure to perform, feelings exacerbated by my Type-A tendencies toward workaholism.
Factor in some bouts of depression and a number of unplanned but unexpectedly great projects landing in my lap over that time and there was a lot of being forced to adjust my expectations, not just for what I would accomplish on sabbatical, but in how I need to live now that I’m back. How I need to appreciate what I do complete. What I need to cut loose from my perceived load of responsibilities.
That last part is a work in progress, but the change is set in me, and I believe that is for the best.
The following series of posts, then, is an accounting of the specifics of that season—delayed six months by the trivial matter of a global pandemic—and the changes it created. It’s not a justification, though. I’ve done enough of that in my life.
Like everything else I’m interested in, it’s a story and one that needs telling, if only for my own clarity and to serve as a reminder that I’ll be doing this thing differently from here on out.