As you may have noticed, I took a summer hiatus from this blog, and the newsletter I send out, though I did continue the other three things I do that are work related: priest in a parish, writing, posting to Patreon.com.
Except for when I didn’t. :)
In addition to the three months I took off from ⅖ of the things I do, I also ended up taking off a month from the other ⅗ of what I do – two weeks vacationing with my husband, and thirteen days of spiritual retreat. Which was lovely.
For the family vacation, my husband and I went camping across the US on a tour to see rocks and trees we hadn’t seen before (largely in and around National Parks). We also went barreling across sand dunes (in a sand crawler, not a dune buggy – the duners look at you funny if you call it the wrong thing), got in touch with primal anger on top of the US’s only supervolcano caldera, failed at any point to be mauled by grizzlies, ate surprisingly brilliant one-burner gourmet meals, drove 9,000 miles, learned how to properly get a stuck flat tire off a car, got to know local flora, fauna, humans, and hellmouths, meandered back and forth across the Colorado Plateau, hiked at 9,000 feet, and kept each other amused with dramatic readings of various pieces of fiction.
Was it all fun and games? Well, no. Of course not. When we’re Enlightened, I’ll let you know. But I prefer, in general, to remember the fun bits, and just laugh about the time I broke my toe (Cooler vs. Big Toe: Cooler 1: Big Toe 0) and that other time I had a panic attack in Monarch Pass (Colorado, like South Dakota, believes guard rails are for wimps, and driving from point A to point B should be an extreme sport.).
The spiritual retreat was somewhat more laid back. It involved a lot of prayer, reading, meditation, and self reflection, but that probably won’t be surprising for anyone who has gone on a spiritual retreat. And lo, progress towards Enlightenment has been made, and my spiritual practices outside of retreat time have been strengthened.
For the other two months of the hiatus, I spent my excess time writing, which was just delightful. I have a weekly goal of 15000 words, and I don’t always make it (and writing blog posts does not count). And during the hiatus I made that goal a lot more often, and sometimes even went over. (Always exciting.)
Looking into the next nine months of blogging (before the next summer hiatus – this time I’m announcing it in advance), I’m looking forward to the ongoing and occasional series of ‘What I’m Reading Now’, as well as a new occasional series I’ll be starting on present mindedness, title yet unknown.
Glad to be back, yo.