Guest Post

“GET UP! GET UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!” These words were all I could hear deep in my sleep until I did just that. I thought I was dreaming until it was so significant my body told me something else was going on.

The Way It Is, By William Stafford

Aging, women friends, being out in the world and elder wisdom.

In our head-centric culture, we assume the brain is in control, like a CPU, or Central Processing Unit, executing a plan.

Busy, busy, busy. That's what you'll hear if you ask a retiree how things are going. Inquire further, and you discover that "busy" means an assortment of leisure activities (pickleball is hot right now), cool courses (medieval instruments, anyone?), doctor visits, language lessons, and a round of golf. Occasionally you'll hear about volunteering, starting a new business, or writing that novel put off for decades.

What makes the Sabbatical Sessions so supportive for sabbatical-takers? As I wrote in my recent previous post, it comes down to four ingredients—structure, space, community, and distance. Before I get to SabSesh’s secret sauce, let me take a step back and tell you how I got here to Baja:

I learned about Type 2 Fun from Christine Sperber. These are the activities we only recognize as fun afterwards. They can be physically challenging such as mountain climbing or where there is a fear, perhaps of being laughed at.

“Ready to Connect” The proclamation makes me smile.

One of the core MEA tenets I hold so dearly is developing a growth mindset. This is in comparison to having a fixed mindset. Sounds obvious right? Not so easy. At the most fundamental level, a fixed mindset comes down to how often we say “no” vs. “yes” in life.

After a week on the MEA campus here in Baja, I can say, without a doubt, that Sabbatical Sessions is one of the best ways to start, end or spend one’s sabbatical.