Fallbbatical Spectacular 🎃 🍁 🧙‍♀️

Hey there groovy ghouls and goblins,

It's me, reporting live from fall in Upstate New York. *Clinks goblets of pumpkin spice latte* Leaf peeping every weekend, hygge-haters can't stop me.

So, let's get real- what is happening, how is the sabbatical? When is it over?

Well, here's the news- SABBATICAL IS NEVER OVER. I'M DOING SABBATICAL FOREVER. I AM THE SABBATICAL NOW. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Well, not exactly true. But the longer I'm away, the more I'm reconsidering how I've been working. Reconsidering who I am entirely.  As you may recall, I spent a lot of the first four months of sabbatical going "...is this thing working? I don't feel anything! Am I supposed to feel different?" So- this is good news!

Here are three things, in month five of sabbatical, that I know to be true.

A Month Five Manifesto

1- Turns out I love writing books and making my little videos and docs about death, the dead body, and the funeral industry.

Pretty sure there's not a new career on the horizon. I actually have the best job in the world. You are here supporting me and I have won the love-what-you-do-for-work lottery (not the Shirley Jackson bad kind of lottery).

The dirty secret is that beyond the trip to the Federal Trade Commission in Washington DC and that video last month (which, by the way, quadrupled the official public comments to the FTC-thank you!), I've been writing and researching for big projects and eventual new videos. I'm like, excited to get back to this!

(This is the pet cemetery at Edith Wharton's house in Massachusetts. I recommend visiting the house AND reading her book The Custom of the Country, a recent fave.)

2- But listen, LISTEN. Here I am, focusing on what I love, "working" even during my sabbatical. And I feel great. So, what the hell else was I doing that completely burnt me out?!?

That's a great question, Caitlin. I think you were owning a funeral home, overseeing a nonprofit, doing interviews, lobbying the government, worrying about social media, doing hella Zoom meetings, all sorts of additional Patreon content*, and a zillion emails a day.

Turns out- I DON'T WANT TO DO ANY OF THAT. And I know what you're thinking- "ma'am, no one wants work."  But I DO want to work. I just want work to look like puttering around researching and thinking and making genuinely good things even if they take quite a while to develop.

(*I don't want you to think I'm calling you out, patrons. I have enjoyed writing these newsletters, and your feedback is always smart and supportive. It's not that I don't want to hang out!  It's more that everything gets gobbled up by this system of like "this patreon tier gets 2 vlogs a month and this tier get the vlogs and the special livestream and this tier gets the..." and on and on. It turns a relationship I really enjoy and value and turns it into something intense and productivity oriented FOR NO REASON.)

Which brings us to my biggest, most recent revelation...

...3) Um, you're not going to believe this, but I don't think I'm a stone-cold achiever.

What's your sign, girl?  I'm a Leo. You don't have to be an astrology-fan to use your sign as a nice little metaphor.  All I'm getting at is this– I relate to the noble lion. First of all, lions sleep 18-20 hours a day!

"This may seem like sheer laziness but in terms of survival, it makes complete sense. In order to survive, lions have to hunt and eat meat as well as protect territories. These intense periods of activity require a lot of energy..."

While I don't sleep 18-20 hours a day (shoutout to you if you do for whatever reason), I need a large amount of time to metabolize my thoughts. Everything I write/create/put out in the world, has gone round and round in the rock tumbler of my head for days, weeks, months before you ever see it.

Is all that thinking, fact-checking, re-thinking, etc- pure laziness? No! Yet, prior to sabbatical, I had my life set up with almost no time for that deep thinking, just a full schedule of task-switching between very different things (addressing a very human problem at the funeral home is a wildly different skill than researching an obscure corpse law which is a wildly different skill than making a lighthearted social media post about human composting.) No wonder I haven't written a book since 2019!

Lions are visible, they have nice hair (hi, hello), and need a lot of rest to perform at their peak. What's wrong with that? After sabbatical I'd say nothing's wrong with that. Spending a lot of time reading, writing, and thinking is not a sin. Before sabbatical?  Intense guilt, all the time, for not working all day everyday– feeling lightly like I'm pseudo-failing at everything. Where was that pressure coming from?  WHO THE H-E-DOUBLE-HOCKEY-STICKS KNOWS, SHARON.

If I really think about the personal work I have left to do this sabbatical, it's understanding where the guilt comes from (hey late capitalism yes I see you, too) and how I can gently, firmly, and permanently let it go and focus on making good, valuable work.

If you've done it, or are in the middle of it, your secrets are most welcome.

Putting her bunny slippers up on the coffee table and signing off,

Caitlin