Steve's Blog

Lake Powell/Glen Canyon

2005-05-28T11:26:00.000-07:00

I put my fully loaded kayak in a skiff that I rented at Antelope Point Marina in Page, Arizona, and the guy John drove me 52 miles north into Utah to Oak Canyon and dropped me off.

It was hot, windy, and the sun was blasting, and I sat on a spit of sandstone and had a sinking feeling of "okay, here I am. What the hell am I doing here?" I couldn't see any decent campsites so got in the kayak and started paddling. Huge gusts of wind whipped up white caps that came flowing over the bow of the kayak. I stayed close to shore and after about an hour found a decent campsite.

The wind was blowing so hard as I unpacked that I had to cover my face from the stinging sandstone particulate. It's really tough to pitch a tent in such wind, but by 4:00 I was inside. Hot. Sandy. Letdown. The evening wind blew so hard that I had to cover the tent stakes with heavy rocks. Sand rained in all night - blown up between the rainfly and right through the netting of the main tent fabric. I could see it falling through the flashlight beam. I was covered in a layer of red dust by morning.

The morning arrived calm and beautiful.

Evening two is quiet.

And then came a week of the sublime. The main body of water - Lake Powell - has 96 slot canyons to explore; the result of the Glen Canyon Dam built in the early 60s. 700 feet down was the original Colorado river. An ecological abomination to many, but strangely, artificially beautiful.

I sit on smooth sandstone from 6 to 10 in the morning every day and gaze out. I read. I practice the small guitar I have with me. I eat. Then I climb in the kayak and leave for some exploring.

Into a canyon

I don't know how to climb back into a kayak if I capsized it, and this water is still freezing because it is early in the season. Vertical walls mean I am continually noting the last place where I could swim the overturned kayak, climb out of the water onto the rock, and get back in.

There is no way to fall out unless I do something stupid like reach behind myself for a camera and lose balance.

The canyon narrows

Into a slot

Water ends, and I continue hiking

Day number three had me realizing that continual coats of sunscreen would allow me to be in the sun all day. And at that point I reveled in just sitting with hat, glasses, and sun. I felt no burning. By day number four, I took off the sun glasses and hat because it threw me more directly into the environment.

2:00 PM blasting sun

Peru Little Drama

2005-05-28T11:10:00.000-07:00

I was in Peru last year hiking and spent the first day in Lima walking around. I was approached in the main plaza by an attractive, shabbily dressed woman who proposed being my guide for a city tour. She had a portfolio of pictures of her with other tourists and her name was Isabel.

Here she was:

As we sat there another woman came up and sat down, and told me that she, too, was a tour guide. Here name was Meri Monica.

The three of us talked, and while there was an undercurrent of competition, I think we three were each satisfied to have something to be doing. The two women did not seem to know each other.

It became a bit awkward, and I asked if they wanted coffee or some food, and we could practice our English and Spanish together (and I would buy).

We sat outside at a restaurant, and a very odd dynamic began to emerge. There was a huge competition for my attention. On the one hand was the professionalism and obvious integrity of the second woman, Meri. She wanted to talk history, architecture, etc. But Isabel chose to tell me of her life, which was a sad story of abuse from her husband, poverty, and lost opportunities. She started crying several times, quite genuinely it seemed to me. When her food was delivered (quite a lot of food) she got in a huge argument with the waiter and sent it back to be redone in some way which I never understood.

All this was interspersed with a very effective come-on to me. Huge personal warmth, etc., etc. I found myself really wanting to take her tour and sort of wished that Meri would get lost.

Next thing I knew the owner of the restaurant was motioning me to come in, and advised me that she was some sort of "bad" person. He then walked out and got in a huge shouting match her, apparently then telling her to leave.

She left, motioning to meet me later in the plaza. By then I was wondering about various scams, and headed the other direction. I didn't see her again

I did run into Meri a few blocks away and did end up taking a great all afternoon taxi tour of greater Lima which included an eye opening trip to her poverty stricken neighborhood within the enormous sprawl of barrios that is greater Lima.

THE E-MAIL I GOT FROM MERI MONICA EIGHT MONTHS LATER:

Oh, friend, I am very happy that you remember me.

Talking about my job, you know that I am offering tourist packette, tickets
plane, inca trail, etc... I win a small PORCENTAJE for each sell, in
these weeks, I have been having a little sell....But, you know that also I am offering my service of tourist guide...For this side, I can get a little
more of money.....But, I have city tour just a few times

Really, I might get many city tours all the time, but, for some INESCRUPULOSA PEOPLE from my country...many tourist could be afraid and don`t accept any city
tour.......

I don`t want to talk you about it, but, maybe you remember the
crazy girl that INTERRUMPIÃ our conversation and was telling us some
terrible story of her life, afterwards she did a horrible show in the
restaurant where we were eating...Then, sometypicall musicians were playing
some good songs, after they asked for you some money and you gave them some
so the crazy girl also asked for you money...After, she continued talking
about her terrible life...Really, she was bothering us a lot....So, when,
she went to the bathroom I told you that I didn`t know nothing about that crazy girl...Finally, we decided to separate and let that girl go...

Afterwards we met again in front of the SANTA INQUISITION MUSEUM and started the city tour.....I am sorry, but, I am talking you about that girl, because of that some months ago, a TELEVISION INVESTIGATION PROGRAM did a report about some bad people that offering to the tourist drougs, alcohol, sexo, etc....In the main square, and the true is that in that report the crazy girl who bothered us, was in that report...In other words, she is PROSTITUTE, for it and for many cases alike
to it, I don`t have many city tours, because many tourist migth DESCONFIAR
of my work....Really, those are the things that DAÃAN LA IMAGEN of my
country and also destroy the work of a lot people.

Really, I am upset, because of my sells...Now, I am selling very a little
and you know that studying english is expensive and also, I have to pay my
basic neccesities....For it, I want to ask for you smallll help. If you can recommendnd me to some tourist to do city tours, You know that I am honest and I only want to work more....PLEASE, try to understand me......In addition to
I know a lot things about history, geographic, nationarealityty, social
problems, etc.

Thank you so much for all.....MANY GREATINGS FOR YOUR FAMILY....YOUR FRIEND
FOREVER....MERI MÃNICA.

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I didn't think she was a prostitute. I thought she just really liked me (!)

Jack's Blog

2005-04-08T13:42:00.000-07:00

Mix together the following:

* Desire for activities with my children
* Scanner
* Digital Camera
* Time

Here's what we've got so far.

The World According to Jack

Susan B. Anthony

2005-04-07T20:26:00.000-07:00

It was pouring rain, 9:00 AM, and I needed to do something interesting. I was listless and bored.

For the longest time, I've had these dollar coins stacked on a shelf. I grabbed them and drove downtown, parking near the Seattle Center. Howling wind, driving rain as I headed south on First through Belltown.

I have this recurrent desire to develop my ability to observe, and to be more externally oriented. I walked though this sort of unpleasant environment of wet and wind, watching and listening.

The men's bathroom in the hallway behind the Macrina coffee joint was blocked by a cleaning cart, and a woman was inside doing the sinks and talking in what sounded like a Slavic language. I waited awhile, poked my head in with a sort of guilty smile, and she moved out of the bathroom, smiling at me, talking on the phone.

When I came out she was down the hall, off the phone. "What language was that?!" I asked. "Bulgarian."

We talked for a couple minutes. Then I told her that I had found these coins. "Here," I said, "we don't really use dollar coins...." Just a gesture as I moved on. A nice feeling.

Bell street into the Market starts to get busyer, and I watched faces, clothes, posture, movement. The endless varieties of retail and merchandizing. I don't like going into stores, though.

A bit farther down, two old guys were holding a sign at the Aurora and Seneca off ramp. I said "hey", and told them I found these coins on a shelf; "Here are couple for each of you, they are dollars."

To which the older exclaimed, "They're the old silver ones, they must be 1979, they've got the gold ones now." And so they were: 1979.

I gave them all away over a couple hours, and needed some dollars bills for multiple copies of Real Change.

Most of the people I talked to were in as good or better spirits than I was/had been, and so my day took a nice turn.

2005-03-26T22:07:00.000-08:00

When possible, I used to sit at the top of the stairs up to our house in a broken wicker chair with the afternoon sun on my face. I always considered the sun, its marvel, it's mystery. Why didn't we exclaim about it more?

During the year, I'd watch its arc. In early April it finally made it over the Roth's roof and was able to set right between their house and the next house north - the blue rental with all the people I never meet or know and who seem to just come and go year after year.

I would quietly celebrate this symbol of spring.

With each year, these cycles seemed shorter. But years do get shorter as we live more of them.

To my left, the front door was usually open, and I often could see Jack in a contorted position on the couch absorbed in something.

People walked by with their dogs or babies. I found that if I stayed perfectly still, they rarely looked the 20 feet up at me. But moving my body always brought a glance.

Something deep in us is alert for movement.

Presence precedes meaning

2005-03-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

Last night I attended a concert of Sophie's Concert Orchestra at Garfeild High School. It featured members of the Seattle Symphony.

At different times, I find myself fixated on different concepts. Lately, I have been thinking about "phenomenology". It's a big old collection of ideas; the details are unimportant here. However - and this is the crux - the phenomenologist is a "witness and not a critic of experiences." Furthermore, "What appears matters first before one asks what it might mean." (Robert Romanyshyn)

What a cool idea!!! What is the experience I'm having? What are the perceptions themselves, and the felt senses that arise?

Last night I was practicing simply observing and staying with the direct sensory experience in front of me, and not disappearing into all sorts of internal opinions and evaluations.

At one point, 11 members of the Seattle Symphony performed a chamber piece by a 20th century composer named Golijov. So I listened. At first my eyes were open, and the experience immediately included the physical appearance and movements of the performers, the audience, and the various spacial characteristics of the room.

I shut my eyes and kept my attention as much as possible on the aural flow.

A number of sensations arose. First were senses of beauty and non-beauty, which were quickly connected to liking and not liking. I watched these sensations. Were they linguistic? Was I suddenly thinking the words "Oh, that is really nice." Or were the senses more emotional? They were both.....

I tried to bring myself back, though, to the pure sound.

Sounds became textures, and textures became instruments. I couldn't help it. I found myself noticing the tonal differences between a violin, a clarinet, a trumpet. Suddenly it wasn't a composition I was listening to, but instruments and the relations between instruments.

Again, I brought myself back to the pure sound.

The conductor had said something before starting about the year 1939, Gypsies and that the composer was Eastern European. This was all I could hear in my rafter seat. Midway through, I found myself thinking of the Gypsies, the beginning of World War II, and suddenly I was in a reverie far away from the music. I was thinking about the movie "Latcho Drom" - a documentary about the Gypsies. This, along with the music's minor key and slow tempo raised a feelings of abstract sadness - migration, war, my rememberings of seeing and talking to poor Gypsy people in Romania.

I found myself having these thoughts, and said to myself "Go back to the music!"

But it was hard, because then started remembering a big debate I witnessed while working for the Frye Art museum that pertained to the placement of written commentaries next to the drawings that comprised a particular exhibition. How did the written explanations enhance or detract from the direct experience of the art?

I was thinking about how the small bit I heard of the conductor's introduction (Gypsies, etc.) had become itself a part of the context of the piece. And there I was, first experiencing feelings for Gypsies, followed by a consideration of how the conductor had influenced my experience by stating these couple pieces of information.

At that particular point the music itself was very much gone, and a backdrop that I was largely unconscious of.

But I brought myself back. The second movement started, and it was a wilder piece, with a lot more dissonance and abstraction. I just let the sounds move through me. Could I listen with no words coming to mind? I watched for words.

I did pretty well, except that other thoughts did arise near the end. Was this piece of music a story? Did I need to know more of the composers intent. Did I need the words from the conductor at the beginning to appreciate it more?

And then, it ended, and I wondered about its coherence and qualities as a composition. I had no sense of these things.

So a portion of my experience was direct, and purely sensory. A portion involved taking some things I found myself noticing, and thinking about them, which took me away from the music.

How quickly we depart from simply witnessing and being present to all that we behold. Our experience of others, of music, of books, of ideas becomes a dialogue, a debate. We go internal. We leave and go to our minds.

Not a problem, but it is really relaxing to simply observe.
-------------------------
Sophie age 11, Myconos, Greece

Hanging out with the Boys

2005-02-27T13:47:00.000-08:00

For me, the pleasures of technology are sometimes rare. So many epic struggles over software and hardware confusions. Today, though, I had the fun of a couple hours of complete technology success.

A month or two ago I recorded my friend Paul on a digital recorder. He was talking about about the mind of the artist. We had been playing music with some people and I had the machines on during a break.

So today I went through the process, starting with the manual for the Alesis Disk Recorder open on my lap. First, I digitally cut the sound segment (which was quite a bit longer), and then ran a 6 second fade in (and fade out) on each side of the file to make it less abrupt. Then I burned a CD in the Alesis of what was a minute and a half of material, and walked over and put the disk in the D drive of my computer. I opened it in I-tunes, saving it as an mp3 file. I sent it to my Web site server at Speakeasy.net into a file labeled "downloads".

The Blogger software I have is tied into my main site, and then all I had to do was associate this entry using the the Blogger instructions.

Well, it was a little more complicated than that, but made for a fun afternoon. Satisfying. (Then I did the same thing for a the first mix of my music files, which you can connect to through this site.)

Here's Paul!

Sound Clip of Paul talking

Click here to hear Paul on art

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Here's our friend Steve who was there too. He's pretty old but still a good guy. He cooks great ribs.

Our fragile selves

2005-02-15T09:29:00.000-08:00

A couple days ago I was in a meeting with the senior managers of a large local non-profit and I found myself bothered by the end of it. One of the people - another consultant actually - seemed to be treating me poorly. There were bunches of times...

At one point, I was introducing a potentially tense discussion about what would make the group work well together. I was saying something about the importance of everyone assuming good faith and everyone struggling to make the assumption that others also want what's best. I made a comment about how our different histories, styles, and experiences are such drivers behind the conflicts between people. How can we get beyond "the war of the minds" - my mind is right, yours is wrong.

This other person interrupts me, and says something to the effect of "Listen, I'm a pragmatist, and we got to keep this simple. My rule for people is a lot simpler: "Always work to give the benefit of the doubt."

She did it with a tone that had me with this instinctive feeling of being dismissed. (I actually liked her point, and it might well have been an improvement over mine. A much simpler construction, yes.)

But she seemed rude, and this was another in a chain of interactions with her that were not much fun. Others in the room noticed the same thing and commented to me, adding fuel to the negatvity. Making matters worse were her various comments within our larger process of working together regarding how much she "appreciated the collaboration between us." I found myself instinctively not believing it. Did she mean it?

These were my thoughts. I was being wronged! I continued to be nagged over a couple days, feeling solidarity with my strong sense of "being disrespected," "not being valued," etc. Along with this came, well, a dislike of her and reveries regarding how I "wouldn't ever work with her again." I found myself thinking through various compelling, articulate ways that I might describe and devalue her to others were the chance to arise.
----------------------------------------------------
But then, I found myself looking in at my mind and ... these thoughts themselves! This organism known as Steve Forman and his instinctive fragility. What were these obsessions? What was this vulnerability? Who was the "me" that was feeling so diminished?

And who was this other person...this person with whom my mind was in battle? Did I actually know what she thought? Was she her mind? And what if she didn't like me? Did I even know? I was the one engaged in the disliking!

And then I had such a sense that she - like me - was probably captivated and controlled by her thoughts, her ideas, her senses of what was important and right.

I'll bet she looked at her behavior vis a vis me as being honorable, decent...
--------------------------------------------------

What an ephemeral thing these minds of ours are. As if these thoughts somehow were us. Is that all we are? A stream of beliefs and thoughts?

The more I looked in at myself, the more the sense of the injured "me" seemed nothing more than ephemera... thoughts floating by. What is this mind that so wants to preserve itself and so needs to prevail and win and come out on top?

I find it fascinating to think about the distinction between what actually is happening out there, and my thoughts about these things. So many of our emotional problems arise from our thoughts themselves.

After a couple days, I completely forgot about her and the interactions.

Lagos, Nigeria

Felt senses-what are they?

2005-02-06T11:59:00.000-08:00

As I move through midlife, and hit age 50, I'm noticing the frequency with which I see and hear references to the concept of just "being", of learning to live in the present moment, of presence." A lot of people, including me and my friends, are thinking about time, its scarcity and oppressiveness. This bombardment of activity that is urban life is a perpetual maze or chessboard. I'm always thinking, always lining up the long sequence of moves to get through the day...the week. I'm of my mind and in it, always.

The concept of presence and "being in the moment" is comforting, but what's the actual experience of it? What kind of mentality would I have while I am in actually in the present? (and not obsessed with the future or reminiscing of the past).

Last night I was reading a most beautiful book. Page 7, Gilead by Marilyn Robinson.

Well, see and see but do not perceive, hear and hear but do not understand, as the Lord says. I can't claim to understand that saying, as many times as I've heard it, and even preached on it. It simply states a deeply mysterious fact. You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it.

I realize that I've carried a deep belief about the importance of being in the present since college classes on Taoism and Zen. What's newer is my sense of a huge distinction between all those intellectual ideas, concepts, commentary, philosophies and deeper "felt senses." What is the practice of being in the present? What does it feel like? How do I do it vs. talk and read about it?

Now, "being in the present" is a more abstract experience than, say, being generous. But the same dynamic plays itself out. I might believe in the value of generosity but what does it feel like? What's the practice of it?

This morning I was reading Annie Dillard's book Teaching a Stone to Talk.

I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it. That is, I don't think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular--shall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hands?--but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical sense and the dignity of living without bias or motive.

Hmmm: Living without motive? What does the experience of living without motive feel like? What's the experience and practice of it?

The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons.

What would it mean to live in necessity? How does one know one's necessity? Funny use of the word. On the one hand, "necessity" is the burying of choice. My friend Paul talks of "existential exposure." Peasants in 1300 AD were surrounded by a cosmology and by their given life parameters. But today, we need to create ourselves.

It's this problem of consciousness. I am aware of myself and my mind. I see myself moving through time.

I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel's: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.

What is my "given" - that which constitutes my necessity? How do I come to know this?

We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience--even of silence--by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.

I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles.

I'm working these days on being closer to direct sensory experience. By "closer" I mean a couple things. I'm working to simply observe and take in. I'll participate but work not to label and categorize and intellectually respond.

I know the sense of it when it is happening. There's a nice looseness and easygoingness... Showing is the biggest part of it. (All these quotes are from chapter one "Living Like Weasels" in Dillard's book.)

Italian Dolomites

The e-mail to people about time off

2005-01-27T14:18:00.000-08:00

Dear _______,

Getting your e-mail motivates me to try to articulate this small leap I'm about to take. I'm going to disappear and be off-line and out of town for big pieces of the next seven to eight months.

I've realized that it's time to learn something new in a big way. Not necessarily a change of job, but something new. I don't know what it is yet. I need to read and write new things, do some entirely new kinds of activities, and think about consulting and what I want to do with it in the future. I desperately want to substantially enhance my ability to read music and use music theory - both are very big tasks for a 50 year old mind. But I'm totally excited.

In 1989 I took a year off, and it had a huge positive affect in giving me a sense of revitalization. I was in Asia for that year, but with Sophie and Jack well situated in school, I don't have the option of going somewhere with my family. So I need to create something here that feels really different. (I've tried for about a year to think about how to create the experience of a sabbatical while being here.)

The combination of savings and a couple good paying multi-day retreat processes that have already been scheduled should get me through October. At this point I have two May/June full day retreat slots open. After they are taken I don't need any more work.

I also have realized that I have been doing five friend-related events a week. If I really am going to create a sense of real sabbatical, I've got to break that pattern during the seven months. It all comes down to wanting this sense of "being away" that I remember being so utterly valuable 15 years ago. I've realized that I have to be consistent across all of my friends, and that there cannot be an "in group" and an "out group" (with the exception of a couple people who have serious health issues.) So I am going to see nobody! Really.

You are of my close friends and hope this does not appear off-putting or too anti-social. (My challenge is that I still have to work some, and still have a lot of family responsibilities (like find Jack a new school for next year...)) I just have to feel that my day to day experience really is different.

However, I've decided that the phone is a great vehicle, and so I'll definitely give you a call after I have some initial March fun.

Fondly, from your somewhat odd friend,

Steve
------------------------

Jack Forman, age 5, waving a light stick

I need a sabbatical!

2005-01-16T14:43:00.000-08:00

For the past couple years, I've found myself again and again in a reverie about a sabbatical. I need a period of time in which I find myself doing something really different. But I also see myself to be locked into some patterns that make it very hard to imagine large chunks of time spent differently.

It's the strangest thing. I do my work, and people are almost always warm and appreciative. And yet, I'm not positively affected by their support and kindness. I believe what they say, but it doesn't seem to make much difference. So for the last couple years, I've been increasingly driving to meetings with a combination of exhaustion and boredom.

A while back, I decided to take notes about my work. Some conclusions:

1. The client usually tells me of my value and contribution, but I don't feel it or get satisfaction from it. I arrive home from work and feel that time has been lost from other more fun things that I might be doing.

2. I find myself thinking the same way, and saying the same things. For the job at hand, it's good thinking, and the right stuff to say. But it feels really old...

3. Looking back, I can hardly remember those assignments where I know that I worked closely and intensely with people with whom felt great connection. Many of those relationships - and the rewarding senses of connection - have faded away. The work is forgotten.

I've started to turn down work. At this point 10 potential clients are on the "sorry" list. I can't bring myself to take the work.

Clearly, these are mid-life issues, and when I look in on myself I can easily remind myself of all the forms of my good fortune. "Why not accept and embrace exactly the life you have?" Ah, my Buddhist conflict! And here a double bind: My current, existential dissatisfactions are made doubly worse by the part of me that then sees these thoughts as completely illegitimate. Compulsions! Defilements! Cravings!

I do have to work. I have to support four people. But I've saved some money and have a very light load of higher paying work coming throughout the spring. Three days a month of work and I can make it through October. I could really have a lot of open time if I want it.

A quasi-sabbatical would mean a very different daily experience. I can't yet figure out what that might be, and what I really need is the time to simply hang around and see what emerges. But my ideas are as follows:

A. I'm going to substantially enhance my guitar playing.

1. Woodshedding on my own: I want to read music better and know tonal centers. I want to have the improvisational tools I need to read any chart. I need to comp really well.

2. Playing music with others: I want to have musical experiences with people who are at roughly the same level of ability as I am. But I don't really know what that means. There are so many people out there playing so many kinds of music.

3. Taking lessons, learning from others: I don't quite know what to do about this. There are so many options

But here are a couple samples of me playing with Paul in my office:

Clip #1 Jazz Guitar Example #1

Clip #2 Jazz Guitar Example #2

B. Travel: What am I going to do?

After all these international trips, I'm totally ambivalent about being anywhere other than sitting in the desert. All foreign trips have me thinking "been there..." Every time I bring to my mind the image of a foreign country, and me traveling through it, I have a lot of misgivings.

Maybe there are other purposes. My only leading thought was inspiration via, say, going to Brazil and listening to music at night, practicing during the day. That would be cool.

(I've just been back in a reverie about Brazil... In fact, I got in a reverie once before, as I drove out of Arches and imagined getting some bossa nova instruction in Brazil. Reflecting on this, I don't think it is about instruction as much as listening, going out, and practicing. But it's such a production to put it all together, and then there I am using up my time doing something I've done again and again. Not new. Not risking. And not even practicing my Spanish. Rio is really far away. It requires three flights minimum from Seattle.

And then, there is a solar eclipse in Ghana next year!!!

C. I want to think about this business I am in.

What is it that I do? Should I keep doing it? What new ways can I help my clients? I think I need to really hunker down and read and think and write.

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In thinking about a sabbatical, I will have a terrifically difficult time saying no to all my friends who want to get together, and to clients who call and warmly ask if I am available. My of these clients themselves are quasi friends, and I feel all sorts of obligations.

But it really is time to make a break. A couple years ago, I tried to do it - I remember sitting with Glenn and telling him how I was going to be gone a couple months, blah, blah.... In fact, I can think of a number of discussions. But it always sort of peters out as opportunities arise.

Maybe it's that I want to feel a sense of risk-taking.

But now I really know it is going to happen. Through October, which allows a trip back to Nepal.
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Sophie (14), Jack (7) On the Amtrak from Vancouver.