Last year, at this time, I was preparing to go on my sabbatical. Eight weeks to rest and recharge. About half of that time was nursing my family through our first bout with Covid. I'll admit to feeling like that time was wasted.

Guess what....it wasn't.

Now, on the eve of 2023, I can confidently say that my sabbatical was the beginning of the most transformative year of my life. Even if I didn't get to go on a pilgrimage, or finish writing a book, those eight weeks now feel like that stage of cleaning where things look absolutely worse before they get better. Away from work responsibilities I was alone with all the stuff shoved in the back of the cupboard.

Therapy was finally getting delightfully messy during that time.

I had ingested the ethic of humility to the point of self-hatred and I knew that if I didn't change, I would likely die of a heart attack at 50. I hated the way my body looked and felt, and I was unsure of so much.

In August I traveled back east and felt the reality of our loneliness here in Portland. We seriously considered moving back to the Philadelphia area. I started looking for jobs in the area, and after a month-long interview with a Quaker organization, I was offered a job that I turned down. Someday I will find a way to repay that organization for the gift of that interview process. I now know it was never really about the job...it was my way of claiming back some territory from the demons of self-doubt. I emerged from that with a renewed sense of confidence and purpose.

Beth and I were able to take a week or so late this fall to stand back and really look at how overstretched we were...and how, as a result, we weren't able to invest time and energy into building friendships here in Portland. We are trying to figure out how to do that. We need other adults in our kid's lives, people that feel like family to them.

There is another big thing...but I wrote a post a long time ago about some things that just really need the right season to become ripe. This other thing is still ripening.

Lastly, I received a diagnosis of ADD a few months ago and have started treating it with medication. Every hour of every day feels like a lesson/revelation. I am observing things as I have never observed them before and I want to talk about it.

But, increasingly, I am realizing that FB cannot be the place for me to write the way I want to write. Some of this writing won't seem "pastorly." I want to have some more freedom to be candid, unprocessed, creative, and playful without it being so public. I will use swear words, and I'll likely talk a little bit about sex.

A personal journal is a good idea, but I've never been motivated to write for my own sake. This sounds narcissistic at first, but I worked through that in therapy too. When I write my core hope is to connect with another person. When something I write has that potential, I'm motivated to do it more.

This is what the “New Places” is.