Adventures

This morning, a day off, I am still in bed mid-morning. I have come to realize I am exhausted, which is part of the reason, but a bigger piece is that bed is a place I like to hang out. It's comfortable, and I can read and write in silence. My house is often very silent, which I love.

I have two more weeks of work to go. Then I am off, and I have an opportunity to completely reset. Reset focus, goals, ideas, how I live, what I make time for, what is important. I am seeing it as a sabbatical as I intend to work--in some manner--again. Maybe not a government job, though I will not rule that out. 

I am thinking a lot about what is next. I am not interested in leaving Wyo, at least not at present. That's been true for awhile, but it took me a long time to realize that was one reason why I was rarely excited about other jobs. There's something about this state that fascinates and grips me tight. 

I know that I want to continue to be involved in the arts, probably in some sort of leadership way. I want a chance to exercise leadership and vision.  Exactly what that looks like, I don't know right now. Threre are some ideas in the back of my mind. 

Relationships are important to me. I'm fortunate to have many wonderful connections and I look forward to building on them. I want to spend time with family, and also old friends. Perhaps a trip to the Middle East.  I also want to cultivate the connections I have in Wyo and deepen those relationships now that I am not in a service role. 

I want to do some traveling. I'm interested in both road tripping in the US but also in going overseas. Some places that interest me are: Iceland, Ireland and islands around Ireland and Scotland, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Prague, Budapest, Indonesia. This is as yet unformed. Ideas and possibilities are swirling around me but few are clear right now. 

I want to make art. One thing I want to explore is how important making art really is to me. I don't know that I am interested in making it for sale, or trying to "make it" as an artist. In the past few years, my interests have changed there as well. So time needs to happen for exploration of making work, and how that becomes a more important piece of my life. It's definitely been allowed to languish for a few years!

At some point I will also need to think about working again. However, I am sensing that the wisest course there is to trust it will come from something else I do. 

One thing that is occupying me this morning is how to organize myself. I listened to a TED talk http://www.ted.com/talks/stefan_sagmeister_the_power_of_time_off

Which I found very powerful. He talked about the importance of time off, sabbatical time. While there are many things he said that don't resonate, there was one lesson I am thinking it would be wise to take note off. He said that he found planning was important because otherwise the time got taken up by many little things (I think the phrase he used was that he became his own intern). So I have been thinking about planning--what I might like to plan and how I might like to do it. Of course there are many many planning tools out there that I might take advantage of. And yet, many of those seemed focused towards something else. Or maybe the idea of planning seems focused away from my ideas. Sometimes I am contrary just to be so and this feels like it might be one of those times. 

I am discovering it is somewhat hard to type on a touch screen keyboard which won't show the letters.