Today is the first day of the new semester.

Today is the first first day of the new semester in 25 years where I am not preparing to teach because…

I am on sabbatical!

Sabbatical: “an extended period of paid time away from work, an opportunity for travel and study outside of regular job roles to advance your career.”

Sabbatical: “from the word “Sabbath,” meaning a day of rest dedicated to God.”

I am on sabbatical: essentially, a string of Sabbaths. Mine to last five glorious months.

Technically I’ve been on sabbatical since just before Christmas, but the holidays are their own kind of time and space and I’ve chosen to mark today as the official beginning. January 8-June 1.

It’s Monday, the first day of the new semester and I am on sabbatical: sitting in a sweet café down the hill from my house–a place I have intended and failed to visit for the last year– having a slow, intentional, delicious coffee, listening to jazz music from the speakers and car music from Second Avenue, and staring into the wide open space that has opened up in front of my exhausted body, brain and spirit.

This is precious.

What will I do with my one wild and precious sabbatical? Well, Mary Oliver, let me tell you: I am going to savor it like I’m savoring this cup of coffee. I don’t precisely know what that savoring will look like, though. I am not traveling much outside of some events to promote my new book in March, and while I did propose a specific project in my sabbatical application, it’s been three years since that application and the project I proposed has morphed into something very different.

In the three years since my application, so many things have morphed into nearly unrecognizable shapes and patterns. At work. At home.

Oh, a pandemic.

And hell, my mother died. The most profound morphing.

I do have a new project connected to that actually, and I plan to take the first painful, gingerly steps toward it during this sabbatical, but honestly?

I plan mostly to rest.

O, Emily Dickinson, I cannot remember a time when I felt so much space sparkling between my thoughts. When I could wake up without feeling the dreary public frog of anxiety squatting on my chest.

Suddenly I can breathe.

In my sabbatical, I will write some and paint some and try to get better at both things. I will read and cook and eat and sleep. I may try to re-launch a proper newsletter (would you like that?) and focus on selling my artwork. I’d love to have a proper art show. Eventually, I will garden. I will spend time with my family and my dogs and (re)connect with friends. Maybe I’ll make some new friends, too.

I will share my gifts-and I know I do have many, though they have felt so very far away of late–my gratitude and my love with the world.

I will be idle and blessed and stroll through the fields.

I will count myself so wildly lucky to be here.