New now

So I'm my partner and I are driving into work this morning. She catches me looking into the distance at the lake and the trees with their adolescent leaves. The sky is bright, shiny blue. The light popping off the water
hits me right in the eye. A gust of wind shakes the car a little as we
round the corner.

"What are you thinking?"
"I was thinking it'd be nice to have a sabbatical right about now."

My mind had drifted back to a period more than ten years hence when I had taken an extended mental health vacation. The first week of it, I spent
crying and heavily medicated. By the end my month long reprieve, I was
sleeping better than I had in years and writing every day. I figured out
I loved cooking and liked taking brisk walks by the bay. For the first
time in my life, I felt like I could completely actualize every passionate
thought in my head.

This morning seemed a great moment in time to pick up where I'd left off over a decade ago.

"How much vacation do you get a month?", she asked. "Right now, with your
seniority and your buying an extra week, it's about 6 weeks a year?"
"Yeah, that's right."
"And that doesn't include official holidays....rounding up, that'd be about
another two weeks, right?"
"Yes"
"Plus, you work an alternate schedule that gives you a day off every other
Friday, true?"
"OK, yes, but..."
"So, that works out to another five weeks, am I on track here?"
I sighed. "Yup."

"So, you're bitching about wanting a sabbatical and you currently have 13
weeks off a year, which I think is roughly the equivalent of 3 months?
Most people in the working world are only lucky enough to get 2 or 3 weeks
for the ENTIRE YEAR. So what you've got, the time off you've access
to...isn't that kind of like a sabbatical, but one that you could take
advantage of almost every year?"

And so it is.

What this tells me is, I don't really want a sabbatical.

I want a new life.

~~~~~
Thank you to Alcuin Bramerton for the wonderful koan comment to my last
entry. Here's a link to another of his Norfolk koan that speaks volumes to
me today.