So, it’s Sunday, and I’m just now getting around to writing and publishing my weekly blog post. It’s not that this week was particularly busier than normal. Partly, I just forgot to get to it on Friday. And even when I remembered about it earlier today, it just wasn’t a priority task at the time.
So here I am. Sunday evening. A little more than two days later than I normally publish my weekly posts, and I’m just now getting to drafting it.
And you know what? I feel ok with it.
Very early on in my sabbatical, I wrote a post about appreciating detours and accepting when I decide to reroute. At that time, I had been beating myself up for not following the stringent plan I had set for my sabbatical. It took writing that blog post to calm myself down and reassure myself that I was allowed to deviate from the original path.
And so, it’s interesting to reflect on my reaction today. I usually post on Fridays. This week I didn’t. And it doesn’t really bother me.
In fact, there have been a lot of changes in plans that I’ve found myself readily accepting, even when in the past, I would have seen these deviations as failings. A while ago, I scaled back from two blog posts a week to just one. We’re probably going to move our podcast to monthly instead of bi-weekly. We had a house project we planned to finish this weekend but realized we’ll actually need two weekends to get it done (which will push back the schedule on our other house projects).
Past me would have had a lot of anxiety about these changes in the plan. I would have told myself it was a sign that I wasn’t working hard enough. That I wasn’t good enough. But now, I find that it doesn’t bother me as much.
It’s not that I’m getting lackadaisical. It’s just that I’m not letting changes in plans be a reflection of my ability or success. In fact, I take pride in being able to reevaluate my plans and trust my judgment to reroute, when appropriate.
I’ve noticed a lot of changes in my outlook on things during this sabbatical, but sometimes they don’t become apparent until they’re put to the test.
