More than usual with a blog post, I am really not sure where this one is going. Your guess is as good as mine at this point about where exactly I’m going to end up and how much I reveal.
Let me start here: I already talked a bit about clearing the decks and the need for a break and a significant chunk of time to be able to do some deep thinking for myself. I understand a bit more about how my brain wants to tackle new problems and situations, and I really haven’t had much of that for the last five years, creating a somewhat irrational sense of panic and desire to retreat. Conclusion: in the long term, I’m determined to make a sabbatical happen for myself one way or another, aiming for early 2027. Three months or thereabouts should do.
In the short term I’m going to figure out how I make smaller little breaks work for me. One bad pattern I’ve been seeing is this: I save up my leave for school holidays or going on vacation with family. I have a five day work week, many week nights are busy with dinner and domestic responsibilities or after school activities for kids, and spend most of my weekend ferrying kids around to weekend activities, catching up on household chores, or catching up on rest because I’m exhausted.
There is no day where I just have quiet time, alone, for myself. To think, to regroup. Even when I do take a day off, I tend to fill it up with adulting backlog from the past five years. (Does the decluttering ever end? I feel like I am always putting up stuff on some PIF group or bundling up donations.)
A few days ago, my daughter was having Preteen Emotions and struggling to let her guard down enough to talk to me about them. She said she didn’t like talking about her feelings to anyone, not even her stuffed animals or her pet rats, she couldn’t let go even when nothing was at stake from being vulnerable. I tried to explain to her the importance of just being able to name your feelings and talk about them, because it helps you gain some distance from them, it helps you pause in getting swept up in the feeling and be able to reflect a little.
I told her about my own experience in Alateen, when I was eleven and twelve, and the group I spoke with there. The sponsor was this soft spoken, small man named Jerry, nicknamed “Bear”, who had ginger hair and the most unthreatening manner; he really was just the right sort of person for a group like that. Bear had a story that I remember well because he’d share it often. When he was younger, he didn’t really love strong feelings either, so he imagined having a jar in his mind. He’d take whatever feelings he didn’t like, and put them in the jar, and close the lid.
Thing was, said Bear, in his calm, gentle voice, after a while the jar would get full. The feelings didn’t go away just because they were in the jar, and it would start running out of room. Pretty soon, he’d open the lid of the jar to put another feeling in, and stuff would start to spill out, and pretty soon he’d be overflowing with anger, sadness, frustration.
It was never pretty when the jar got full.
I understood Bear’s parable well enough, even when I was younger, and got pretty good at being emotionally honest with myself and others, and being able to switch myself into analytical mode and work my way through my uncomfortable feelings.
But I think there’s a similar analogue to the Feelings Jar with thoughts, and “busyness.” Sometimes I feel like I’m just trudging through the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and each moment builds up with the detritus of decisions and to-dos and responsibilities. I’ve tried meditation, it helps a little. I remember in high school just driving my car on the weekend up to the hills behind Ojai, and going for a good long hike. I’d walk for hours right up to the top of the hill, and sit in the golden brown grass at the top, and be alone while I caught my breath. Everything would just empty out of me.
There really is no substitute for that feeling, and a few minutes of meditation never seems to cut it. I struggle to stay consistent with meditation as well. Maybe I’m just making excuses.
I don’t have a car. Or California hills to escape to. I’m gonna have to figure out how to empty the jar.