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July 23, 2014
Welcome to my Sabbatical. I’m not really Decaffeinated, just Unemployed, but I don’t care to be that person.
Decaffeinated is my metaphor for Unemployed. My professional engines have been maximally revved for seven years, during which I’ve paid off debts, saved enough for my daughter’s education, and developed well beyond my career dreams.
Losing this job has forced on me an unwanted early, or temporary, retirement. I had only a little breather before the war started, and during that breather had some difficult days--at a loss regarding where to channel my career energy, how to de-rev the engines for now, how to handle the sudden loss of social life in the workplace. I also had some good days chilling on the beach.
In wartime, it seems almost subversive to enjoy the beach, but here is where I live and it's so beautiful!
I 'd hoped to go abroad in the framework of vacation days, and with a job to return to. These stable and familiar circumstances no longer exist, but perhaps this is a chance to take a longer, more leisurely journey. A Sabbatical.
I’d like to do that before any snarky genes lurking in my genome flip the ON switch and start expressing themselves in ways contradictory to my desires.
I’ve started thinking about circumnavigating this globe that is our only true home and not worrying too much about the Day After, which after all may never come.
I’ve been so quiet for so long –Gosh! For decades!-- after having sated my wanderlust. This urge tugging at my insides feels less like youthful wanderlust and more like a compulsion to undertake a spiritual and creative quest in maturity, which for whatever reason apparently won't happen if I stay here meditating in lotus position in this apartment or on this beach.
N has said that she thinks of me as a free spirit, and her words have given me courage. D has said that I'm a doer, and her words have given me energy.
I love this perfect, simple apartment, and I’ve a visceral love for Israel and the Near East. To leave for a while this addictive country and my home will take me well outside my comfort zone! That’s why I want to travel by ship and train, but especially by ship so that the Mediterranean Sea beyond my apartment window will keep me umbilically tied to the Holy Land (the mother ship).
When I get back, I’ll seek another NGO-sector job on behalf of social change in Israel because that is where my heart is. Meanwhile, exploring the concept of a Sabbatical––seven days, weeks, months of Shabbat Unemployment in which to seek and grow––is perhaps the best way to wrap my mind around this beckoning adventure.
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