I’ve just completed my Birthday Sabbatical.
From October 31st to January 20th of the following year I celebrate my latest revolution around the Sun. That it coincides with the commercial Christmas season is not a fluke. My birthday is December 25.
During what I also refer to as my Birthday Season, any staples I need – toothpaste, bath soap, toilet paper, laundry detergent – I’ve purchased beforehand. I’m only in stores for food and water. Otherwise, I maintain a small footprint – gas runs, neighborhood library. This creates bandwidth for me to celebrate. Large.
No longer giving my energies over to the overwhelm of holiday hubbub, I now have resources to invest in me – I sleep in, take long walks, swim even longer in the community lap pool, ride my scooter in the Florida Sun, patronize a local comedy club, follow a funk dance band to get my groove on once a month, stretch before sleeping and when I awaken, read nutritious books, and watch entertaining, thought-provoking movies. The only gifts I purchased were online and for me: a favorite perfume, a multi-colored shirt, a treasured book for my personal library.
And these gifts, too: time to be, wander, daydream, imagine and from those spaces, play with possibilities. I savor silence and solitude; reflect on the year past and lay track for the next soon to be: what are my intentions – for creating art, connecting meaningfully with others, and advancing next chapter goals. And in living this gratitude for another opportunity to circle the Sun, I consider what I wish to leave behind before I take that journey for the last time.
With each passing year, this nearly decade-long Birthday Sabbatical becomes more finely tuned, more sharply lived.
But like my first journey around the Sun, gestation of this treasured annual tradition began with conception.
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