Life at 3 miles an Hour

My Starbucks by the beach is being renovated this week and the evidence is all around me this morning. The good news is that, so far, my chair is still here. I’m guessing that they could tear the place down around me and as long as I still have my chair and my coffee I’d survive the change. On week 2 of my sabbatical, it kind of resembles what I might look like on the inside while I attempt some renovation time of my own. From my own DIY projects I have learned that renovation goes through phases. There is demolition. There are glimpses of vision of what the project may look like. There is the reality of the mess that things become and the feeling that it might get worse before it gets better, and then…..

Yesterday, I and the love of my life celebrated year 26 of our incredible marriage journey. We relaxed, wandered some of our favorite parts of Seattle and then finished off the day with an amazing dinner on a patio overlooking the water of Puget sound while the setting sun made lavender silhouettes out of the mountains against a clear blue sky. A few tables away a young couple sat celebrating their first anniversary. This began a conversation between my wife and I about where we had been on our first anniversary , trying to recall where we have spent subsequent anniversaries, and how much more madly in love we are now than when we began. Unfortunately, try as I might, I cannot remember where we spent each of our anniversaries. I can remember a good percentage, but I have to admit once more, “I ain’t as good as I once was”. I do know, or at least have a good feeling, that most of them were reflective of our lives at that moment. In other words, as I look back on where we were ...

This morning marks the first full day of my one month sabbatical. The marine layer is very thick down here at the beach and I’m finding it a fitting scene for the beginning of this time. If I were to sit here the entire day I would witness a gradual clearing of the skies. Right now I cannot even see the water from my big comfy chair by the window. Soon though the water will appear, and then I’ll begin to catch a glimpse of the ferries. Eventually I’ll see clearly the sun shining from the snow capped peaks across the water, the city skyline, and everything else a sunny day in Seattle promises to reveal. The reason I’m on a sabbatical in the first place is that in just about every part of my being, I’m sitting in the marine layer (aka fog). The most frequently asked question from those who have heard of my status these next 4 weeks is “what is a sabbatical?”. Dictionary dot com identifies as “any extended period of leave from one's customary work, esp. for rest, to acquire ...