WHERE I AM and WHERE I'VE BEEN

I'm on sabbatical, which means my daily day is not my usual daily day. Sure, I go to my actual office every 2-3 weeks, mostly to meet with my graduate students and post-docs, and to review research projects. Because none of those go away on sabbatical. But the rest of the stuff--the committee meetings, the lectures, the administrative duties--have (mostly) disappeared.

Most folks on sabbatical go exotic places--Thailand, Italy, India--or work at another institution. My life with kids precluded extended travel, but I have been on a few short trips:

1. BOSTON! Well, Cambridge. And beyond. My favorite place in the world. My graduate student and I went to attend a totally unique conference--geospatial analysis approaches to health problems. A fancy phrase for mapping. Very cool to look at the association of risk and protective factors in 3-D. And did I mention my brilliant student won the Conference's Communication award for her poster on national treatment admissions for prescription opioid abuse? We ate lobster fra diavalo in the North End to celebrate. I spent the rest of the week catching up with colleagues and dear friends and my wonderful Aunt, visits that took me to Waltham, North Reading, Leicester, and Newport.

2. JOHNS HOPKINS! My office away from work. I have a class on the Homewood Campus on Tuesdays, and it is bucolic in the afternoon. I grab a caramel latte and sit on a bench and write and think and wish I was a college student again. 

3. NEW YORK CITY! I'm here NOW. Kind of. I'm taking a non-fiction book proposal course with GOTHAM. Tell me, would you pick this up if you saw it in Barnes and Noble: Un-Balanced: The Epidemic of Prescription Drug Abuse and the Programs and Policies that Got Us There?

4. TAOS, NEW MEXICO! A gorgeous place, with snow-capped mountains and arid desert. I'm digging clay from the earth--here, it sparkles with mica--to make pots the way the Taos Pueblo Indians do. Rather, my character Sheila is in Taos, but through her I get to live vicariously.

5. REISTERSTOWN, MARYLAND! Home sweet home. I spend most of my day at my desk, working on manuscripts and research proposals and gearing up for a new NIH-funded grant on COPD and Depression in Older Adults. I read a lot, including David Sheff's new book CLEAN, which deals with the piss-poor way our society deals with addiction. Timely and important stuff. I see my kids get on and off the bus, and get to make smoothies for them, and help with homework, and eat lunch with my husband.

Nothing fancy, but the rest has done me good. I am bursting with ideas, and that's what a sabbatical is supposed to be all about. Peace...

Sabbatical

This morning, the yellow buses lumbered down the road and took my children to their schools.

The day stretches before me, seven hours of uninterrupted quiet. It will take some time to get used to the peace--the summer was fun-filled, boisterous, the house often taken over by the kids and their friends.

I have been on sabbatical since July 1. But, what with the busy-ness and the occasional halcyon afternoons which find me in the hammock staring at clouds and day-dreaming, I have not accomplished so much in terms of my sabbatical goals.

And what are those goals? Mostly to continue research in policies regarding opioid analgesics that can disrupt--or equilibrate--the balance between medical access to pain medications and abuse of these same drugs. It is a passion I have explored for twenty years, starting with my dissertation. In addition to research, I have harbored an idea of writing a non-fiction book about the topic, one accessible to all, not ideas relegated only to academic medical and policy journals. So I will start outlining a book proposal, drawing on my decades (!) of experience in this area. As well, I will have more time to work on my novel, and more time to read.

I do not begrudge the last seven weeks of idle time. For it wasn't really idle. All the while, ideas and other stuff percolated on their own. For the first time in many years, I feel rested.

For sabbatical shares the same root as Shabbat (Hebrew), the Sabbath. The time of rest. And that is what sabbatical should do most of all--rest the worker, her body and mind, spirit and soul.

I am ready now. Ready--and excited--to see where my mind takes me.