#62: an unusual year
emerging from sabbatical + highlights from 3 years of podcasting
In this issue: lessons from 6 months of sabbatical, growing a baby and saying good-bye after 120+ podcast episodes
I’ve just completed 6 months of sabbatical and while it will take greater hindsight for me to fully understand what I’ve learned in the process, here is a short reflection.
In my initial letter on how I designed my sabbatical, the part I was most intrigued by was the edict to “do nothing or write,” per Neil Gaiman. I expected that, as he says, doing nothing would be so boring that I’d write a lot. On some days I did. But I did far more of “nothing” than I anticipated, and it felt perfect.
Here’s what the months looked like:
Month 1: I did a week-long writing retreat at the Blue Mountain Center, which was invigorating. There, I outlined some ideas for a new book-length project, processed what to do with my first book proposal (which is currently at rest on a shelf because media books are hard to sell!) and spent time with new friends, one of whom became my sabbatical buddy and writing accountability partner (hi, Kate!). I highly, highly recommend you marry someone into your sabbatical journey. Our weekly check-ins have so far served as the mirror I would otherwise be far too afraid to look in as a writer and thinker.
Month 2: I finished going through IVF, which is something I haven’t been open about online but has been a major part of my life in the last year and something I had to process through writing—and honestly just sitting and feeling and resting—which is ongoing. I also learned an extraordinary amount about fertility issues (biological, systemic, emotional, financial), and really had to articulate to myself why it is I want to pursue parenthood. Some friends have asked for a deeper dive into this process, which I’m working on!
Month 3 - IVF was ultimately successful and I was entirely taken over by the first trimester of pregnancy, which no one prepares you for. Yes, there are physical symptoms, but the mental and emotional transformation, particularly if you’ve had a wrought relationship with your body along the way, is inexplicable. While mentally overjoyed, I had to wait for the joy to arrive in my body. While eager to begin planning a future with kids, I had to wait for my body to understand how much energy I had for it. For this reason, I was deeply grateful to myself for creating the conditions to be able to rest during this time, and any remaining hope that I would meet significant deadlines during sabbatical were finally squashed.
Month 4 - Here is where the fruits of the doing nothing began to flower. If pregnancy is a great letting go (I once read that you can’t “get” pregnant just as you can’t “go” to sleep; you have to let go into both), then this was when I finally managed to do so. The first half of sabbatical, I felt plagued by questions of work and worth: Once this sabbatical ends, how much work should I take on? How do freelancers handle maternity leave? Do I want to consider birth as leave from work, or do I want to consider parenthood as the new job that it is, and if so, what contract am I making with myself, and what other projects do I have time for? These are still questions I am grappling with, but many, many days of feeling nauseous, exhausted and alone in my body, forced me to relinquish the desire to plan, and just allow the questions of life to guide my inquiry. My best work has always come from living with questions that ultimately become research, and that’s fed very nicely into book research for this new proposal in progress.
One tip if you’re reading for research in your downtime and don’t want to feel like you’re in work mode with a highlighter and notebook nearby: write in the margins of other books! I spent countless days writing myself notes (and voice notes) as I read (and listened) to other books, and I’m now able to go back, export my highlights + notes, and have plenty of seeds to write from.
Month 5 - Both the nausea and the angst began to lift and I decided to travel again, to see journalist friends, to see pregnant friends, to see family, and to see the beginnings of autumn on the east coast. What I didn’t expect was that this trip would serve as closure to my life in New York in so many ways. Not only did it mark one year since I relocated to the west coast, but it also gave me the chance to miss my new home, the place that has begun to nurture my body, my child and my creativity in ways that are not tied to what I produce, but rather to how I think. It’s a beautiful opening.
Month 6 - October. I really enjoyed it. Your energy really does come back in a big way by the middle of the second trimester, and pregnancy becomes at once easier to ignore in your quiet moments, because your brain is back online and no longer sending you desperate survival messages all day, but also harder to ignore in your social moments, because now everyone wants to ask you questions about your body and plans. My brain being “back online” feels like a rush of inspiration, a desire to consume more information, and small moments throughout the day when dots connect that I can jot down to write about later. I also feel remarkably better at managing my media intake and civic participation, both of which are crucial right now.
What’s next
For November, I’m back on a working schedule, splitting my days between care work and writing. I’m participating in national “novel” writing month, during which writers of all kinds commit to 1667 words a day, ideally reaching about 50,000 words on any given project by the end of November. While many people write novels, it’s now used for any large project, and I’m using it to revisit the outlines I wrote in May and June, as well as write through the research I’ve been doing. In other words, this is the denouement to an odd year of so much change, I’m closing out with as many words as I can, before the new year begins and I have to start slowing down for a new human’s arrival in early spring.
✨ My biggest takeaway for future sabbaticals:
Don't plan to accomplish anything when you take time off. I conflated things like “book leave” and “research leave” with sabbatical, and while that may be what academia structured it for, for the rest of us, that's not what sabbatical is for. It takes you out of the mindset of truly exploring, processing and navigating life, and the boundaries between work and life are thin. Let them be this way. It's hard not to have divisions in your heart when you have divisions in your schedule. And during most of our career-life, we have to have divisions in our schedule. So if you’re taking a break, let it all become a big pooled mess for a little while, trust yourself to go where you need to, and simply observe what lights up together in sweet little patterns by the end. Chances are, it’s the work you’re going to be most inspired by when you get back in the game.
I amassed about 215 pages of notes and research during the last 6 months, so it’s going to take me a while to go through them, but look forward to clusters on parenthood, care and maybe, eventually, AI, as I’ve been reading about it all.
For today, I want to share another personal update, which is that October marked the end of my tenure as the host of Buddhability, a weekly podcast I’ve produced and hosted for the past 3 years about how people apply Buddhist principles to their daily lives. The show is published by my own Nichiren Buddhist community, and is now in the hands of an amazing new host and friend.
Still, it was a bittersweet milestone — doing over 120 interviews and surpassing 1 million downloads was such a wonderful journey, and really reaffirming my belief in how important it is to have a belief system and a daily practice and go deep with it. So here are some of my favorite themes covered, in reverse chronological order.
Takeaways:
Each episode was an incredibly vulnerable, honest and enlightening hour-long interview with a brave person somewhere in the U.S., sharing their own story. Learning to hold space for each one was so humbling.
If there’s one lesson I’m holding onto from the show, it’s that everyone truly does have “Buddhability” within their life, in other words, their own unlimited reserves of courage, wisdom and compassion. Tapping into it on a daily basis can empower us to make positive changes in our personal lives and in our communities to a far greater extent than we could ever imagine. On that note, a favorite quote to leave you with.
“Buddhism is not a religion that closes its eyes to people’s suffering; it is a teaching that opens people’s eyes. Therefore, Buddhism is the path that enables people to become happy. To turn away our eyes from the contradictions of society and rid ourselves of all worldly thoughts is not the way of Buddhist practice. The true spirit of meditation lies in manifesting our innate wisdom in society and resolutely struggling for the happiness of ourselves and others, and to construct a better society.”
— Daisaku Ikeda
Time Spent is currently a free, occasional series of letters about care and media. I have, however, turned paid subscriptions on for anyone who wants to support this part of my writing practice. Next year, I’ll experiment with monetized content streams, but for now, all letters will be sent to both paid and free subscribers just the same.
Happy November,
Jihii
Thank you everything Jihii. Was so happy to see your newsletter back in my inbox. I practice Nichiren Buddhism too and I will chant for your onward journey to be a happy one
❤️❤️❤️