Returning

After two and a half months on sabbatical, I find myself approaching my return to work rather quicker than expected. This summer went by fast.

My sabbatical has been pretty rad. I went to Ireland and got engaged. I had two glorious weeks of printmaking, and my experience teaching drums at GRCB was flat-out amazing. I’ve played an absurd amount of Breath of the Wild. A++ would sabbatical again.

As my last two weeks start to wind down, I’ve found myself antsy to return to work. I’m having a great time, and yet, I’m also getting a bit bored now that most of my summer plans have wrapped up.

I also find myself feeling some degree of anxiety and trepidation about returning, and that surprises me.

Here’s the thing — I like being useful. I’m not really happy unless I’m finding ways to make myself useful. It’s just a thing, you know?

Part of that desire to be useful is also a desire to feel like my work and my efforts are needed. This is in direct conflict with “whelp, I’m just going to pop off for three months, okay?” 

My logical brain says: If you’re gone for three months and nothing’s gone wrong in your absence, that’s absolutely a mark of success. You handed off your work. You can take a break without things descending to hell. That’s a mark of maturity in an organization.

My emotional brain says: Oh my god what if they don’t actually need me? What if I return and everyone’s like “oh hey yeah I guess you exist, we didn’t really notice you were gone?” What if I’m easily replaceable? What if they realize they never actually needed me to begin with, so they fire me? What if? What if? What if?

Anxiety is one hell of a drug, y’all. 

Anyway, I’m not really sure what to do about this. I know I’ll return to work, and it’ll be fine. There’s just this disconnect between what I know and what I feel that’s good to get out. 

See y’all soon.

(PS — I haven’t used Gutenberg since early June and dang is it looking nice, good job pals 👌👌👌)