Sometimes You Have To Let Something Go To Make Room For Something New

I'm taking a sabbatical this fall. There are no classes on my schedule to teach, which does mean money will be tight for a while. What it buys me is time: time to write for this site, time to babysit the grandchildren (a blessing that comes with its own complications), time to meditate in a few different ways, and time to keep working on my own growth.

Over the summer I was both teaching and taking an art class of my own, and I felt stressed to the point where it started making me physically sick. You might expect a psychologist to catch that sooner. Fair enough. But past experience has taught me that this kind of thing is a warning I need to pay attention to and actually act on.

Teaching cost me both time and money, even while I genuinely enjoyed it and grew from doing it. I was paid, yes, but as a part-time instructor, and only for the classes I ran in a given semester. This summer meant a round trip into town, roughly an hour each way, four days a week for two months, with two of those days eating up the entire day.

This fall I'll take two road trips. One is to see the evangelist Joyce Meyer. The other is the homecoming celebration at my undergraduate college, marking the 50th anniversary of my class. I'm doing both on almost nothing, financially speaking, but I refuse to let these pass. Chances like this come around once in a blue moon.

Already there's been a surprise. After word got out that I wouldn't be teaching this fall, I got an unexpected phone call offering some financial help for one of my upcoming seminars. On top of that, I recently stumbled onto some books that answer questions I've been chewing on for a long time without finding answers. I've been devouring them.

Yesterday I slept in and caught up on rest, and I decided to do nothing beyond what I absolutely had to. I slept through the afternoon and missed one of my regular salesmen. I skipped most of the things I'd normally be checking on. I never even turned the computer on.

I'm growing. I plan to go after new things, and old things too, that I simply haven't gotten around to lately.

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