This whole business called ‘the sabbatical from everything’

Let me say something about this thing I’m presently in that I’ve come to call my ‘sabbatical from everything.’

First of all, it is technically erroneous because for me to take a sabbatical, it is assumed that I am still connected with an institution and that is not the case here. At first I didn’t know how to call it. Yes, I did resign and, in hindsight, it was for a variety of reasons, but it was because of the various reasons which have led me to playfully refer to it as my ‘sabbatical from everything.’ It was Julian, one of my ‘inquisitive’ students from Ateneo who first asked me if I was in one. It has a nice ring to it and it’s a simple response to anyone who asks me why I’m hanging out in LB when I should be in Loyola Heights.

Second, I have come to relish this break, and nothing exemplifies this more than the typical day I’ve been having for the past several weeks. Despite the fact that I don’t keep a work schedule, it’s a pretty tight ship. I wake up fairly early – as early as 5:30, as late as 8 am. If I wake up early, I walk to IRRI, do free writing, take my breakfast and come home. Now this part has been rather tricky. It’s usually the jeep for me but ever since I came back, it seems the jeeps plying the IRRI route during the morning rush hour are close to nil. It’s been a mix of options. Sometimes, a jeep does show up. Worse, I walk all the way back to the house. One time, a car stopped in front of me and I wasn’t even hitching a ride. The driver was a woman whose face was familiar from grade school. Apparently, she remembered my sister and, as much as this is still astonishing, I somehow look like my sister and on account of that, I got a free ride. (Well, what do you know?) Another time the IPB bus driver seemed to take pity on me and stopped his bus for me. I thought I was pretty lucky until the bus came to a full stop at the Agronomy Building parking lot – for the rest of the morning.

Assuming that I wasn’t able to haul my ass off the bed early enough to walk to IRRI and conveniently opened my eyes at 8 am, I make sure I’m good to go by 10 am. As I’m working on a project with an impending deadline, I’ve come to realize that the chances of accomplishing work at home is similar to the chances of me wearing running around town in heels like Sarah Jessica Parker flying around Manhattan in her Manolo Blahniks.

Enter Bean Hub. For close to three weeks, I have come to call it my office space. In particular, I’ve reclaimed the table closest to the computer and beside the floor-to-ceiling window. I usually arrive there at around 10:30, say hello to Maya and Mark, order my coffee and pick out the parts of the newspaper that I care about and take a couple of sips. After I go through the sections, I set up and get to work.

Work is with the material I’m working on and the laptop. I leave some space to the right of the table for the mug and some space behind the laptop for my phone and my glasses. I do my thing until around 12:30 when my eyes start to dry out because of the glare from the screen and me running out of words. That’s when I order lunch.

Work is resumed right after lunch and if I’m really on a roll, I can stay on my seat throughout the afternoon. Normally, I call it a day at around 3:30 pm. What happens afterwards can be a variety of things, as long as it doesn’t involve thinking and words. An after-office chat with whoever I find at the coffee shop is cool. If I’m lucky, a friend conveniently drops by just as when I’m winding down with work and it proceeds to a non-caffeinated drink. (Alcohol? Nyuk, nyuk.) An early dinner with one of my former advisees is sometimes an option. Or if I’m just beat (which is most of the time) I head straight home.

During the days when I need to finish a portion of work, I log in extra hours after dinner. Otherwise, it’s TV land for me. In early December, Ellen was in her ‘Twelve Days of Ellen’ bonanza and that’s always exciting. (Plus I love her show.) When Discovery Travel and Living did a two-week nightly marathon of the third season of Project Runway, I stayed up for it. (I only missed two episodes because I was out of town.) But with the long hours I keep in front of the computer, I could barely understand what the designers are making and what Michael Kors is saying.

And so, the past weeks have been quite something, as far as I’m concerned. I love the fact that former students and friends pass by the second floor of Vega and register this look like they’ve seen a ghost when they find me at the coffee shop. I love the fact that I can do daily chats with people I haven’t seen in quite a while. Sometimes those chats are even with people I barely know but, as we’ve come to call Bean Hub home, we share a kinship of sorts. And I discover something unexpected and wonderful about them.

Most of all, I love the fact that even with the intensive work I’m doing, I take it easy with the things in between. Which makes work not feel like work. And the things in between become the things that matter.