A creative sabbatical or...?
In which I try to understand how to live without the boundaries of a job
Welcome to my new subscribers and welcome back to my old subscribers. I’ve moved over from TinyLetter to Substack as a more sustainable newsletter platform. My newsletter has been a bit of an irregular thing to date, but I am planning to drop a newsletter more often. I often talk about writing and reading as well as other things going in my brain (and life). It’s my way of understanding the world going on around me.
I left my job just a little over a month ago now and gifted myself a few months to be out of work so that I could get some writing done and do some deep-dive work into the stuff I haven’t published yet.
When I first left my job, I felt ecstatic. I was giving myself the time that I had been desperate for. Time to write. Time to read, to think. Time to create.
In the first week, I wrote lists, made appointments, wrote more lists, anxiety-applied for jobs, walked and slept.
Within a week, I was sick.
My psychologist told me to stop making lists, to listen to my body, to tell myself what I would tell a friend. My friends told me to take the time. To allow my brain, my body, time to recover.
I attended job interviews, online and in person. I got a job offer that I had to turn down because I was not ready to work (which does beg the question, why was I applying for jobs I was not ready to take?).
I stopped by the Handmade Universe exhibition at the State Library of Victoria on the way home from an interview where I realised that I did not want the job as though to remind myself that I was having a creative sabbatical (even if I had not allowed myself the space for it).
I attended online meetings with a career coach. I enrolled in online courses. I walked, a lot.
I redesigned the garden, knitted a shawl and a cowl, listened to books and read books, cooked dinners and baked cakes and biscuits. I watched Inventing Anna, The Crown, Dahmer. I attended only coaching workshops.
My migraine attacks ebbed off.
I applied for more jobs. I fielded calls from agencies offering me work. I turned down a job, then two. I wasn’t ready for work (still begging the question about why I was still applying for jobs).
I caught up with friends I hadn’t spent time with in ages. I went out in the evenings. I started to relax. My partner and I went away with friends to their holiday house. I wrote in my daily pages journal. I added more words to my current work in progress. I emailed the agent currently looking at one of my manuscripts to see if they were still interest (no reply).
Then I got sick again. For longer this time. And the day after I recovered, I got sick again. Then my migraine attacks became daily.
I attended another job interview and agreed to another. I did online testing for jobs.
A friend messaged me out of the blue to see how I was going. I answered her honestly. I felt awful. This wasn’t how I had imagined this time to be. She replied with the words “…we push our bodies for so long…give them a chance to moan.”
It was the advice I needed. It, strangely, has given me the space to write, create, play and to stop applying for jobs. I don’t need one right now. I need to listen to my body. I need to be creative in all ways.
My garden is taking form. It’s been lots of fun reimagining what it will be. It was previously indigenous plants (local native) but is now a mix of that with flowers, fruit trees, herbs and bush tucker plants.
My knitting project for the last month has be the Stephen West Mystery Knit Along (MKAL). It’s my third year doing it and it’s always a thrill to be a part of something where there are thousands of others around the world doing the same thing.
Today, I’m hanging out with one of my nieces up in the Dandenongs. If it was winter, I’d say it was a lovely winter’s day. It’s raining. I have the fire on and the house is cosy. We’re chatting about creative things and books we love (she’s an amazingly well read human). It’s a reminder that days like this are the privilege of not having a job to go to.