Sabbatical: Month 7

Somehow, time crawls by so slowly and I look away - only to look back and find it's been weeks.  A friend of mine mentions she's been reading my blog and I think to myself "my blog?! there's nothing on there to read..."  Which may or may not be true, depending on your perspective.

All around me, I can sense that people's relationships are struggling - word of breakup after breakup reaches me, and other people who normally seem so together seem a little unhinged.  Personally, I feel okay, I feel like things have settled down tremendously after a turbulent and financially stressful summer.  But almost every day I see evidence of how people are equally capable of hurting or supporting each other.  Sometimes it seems like a fine line and I wonder how anyone survives into old age with a positive outlook.  Maybe it's willful ignorance, or wishful thinking, or luck or grace, depending on how you look at it.  I'm not sure. 

The elegy of fall is hard to bear sometimes, and this year since I've been on 'sabbatical' I feel wasteful.  I feel like normally I would be working harder, investing time and energy in projects and seeing them come (hopefully) to fruition.  This year I am not investing in anything, I am watching the time pass. I feel idle sometimes, and guilty as a result.  At the same time, I can feel my inner battery re-charging and I feel much more resilient and joyful than I have in the past few years.


We also have less money in the household, which has been a very interesting process. Since the spring, we are eating a lot of stored food that previously would have gone to waste, altering or repairing clothes that would have gone unworn, visiting people and generally just slowing down the pace of life.  It's been good.

Sometime I wonder about human generations in years past - without the iPhone, with less 'options' but more time for making bread and visiting family, less 'wordly' but more connected to the earth.  I think everything in life is a trade-off and this sabbatical has really made me wonder what I am trading.  Overall, I feel immensely thankful for the gentle and kind people we seem to have in abundance here in New Brunswick.  I realize without a doubt that human relationships are so complicated and difficult, yet so rewarding, and I am thankful for my tiny place in the midst of this great cosmos.