I am far from complaining that I am overworked during my own sabbatical. I hardly consider it "work" visiting MUN conferences around the world. I love talking to students and colleagues about the sustainable development goals, protecting our oceans, journalism, and MUN Impact. I am happy experiencing new cultures, taking a road less traveled, and sacrificing my digestive system on a phaal curry dish in India. But all these activities involve mental or physical effort and my type A personality means that those efforts have to achieve a purpose or result. It can all be very exhausting. I am having the time of my life with all of this, but at some point in October it occurred to me that I needed a vacation from my "vacation".
Fortunately a moment of enlightenment occurred one evening while freezing my ass off on a glacier in Iceland at 2am hoping to catch the Northern Lights. Sixteen countries into my sabbatical journey and every destination had been planned. Every city I visited involved an itinerary to maximize sightseeing to capture the essence of the place with my camera and journal. At some point during my sabbatical I needed to just go somewhere and relax and do "nothing". Could I really do that? Probably not, but it was clear I was not giving myself time to process and reflect on each experience of this year-long journey.
Earlier that day I realized I had four days between conferences in November and it just wasn't feasible to go home and see family. Between Chennai and Singapore I had an opportunity to find a location and chill. Of course the process of finding the perfect spot was exhausting, but in the end I knew it had to include an ocean, a sandy beach, and a hut that offered drinks all day long. Ok, that's the movie version. I did want a beach and the final detail was that the One World alliance of airlines had to fly me there so I could use frequent flyer miles, which I've been racking up at a very productive rate. In the end I found myself in Phuket, Thailand. It was everything I hoped for. I had my own dipping pool outside my room and the beach a few steps away.
There's a lot to be said for dinners alone and sitting by the pool reading a book that two months later I don't even remember the title. And in those four days I restored my soul and discovered new found purpose in my existing projects and added one more to the collection. Well, I'm not sure that's what "doing nothing" really looks like, but it works for me.
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