Month: November 2020

Feels like we’ve entered the “dog days” of the sabbatical. Struggling to recall any great new accomplishments or learnings from this past week.  Just a whole lot of at-home job jar tasks. And more socially distanced work outs.  Pretty soon I may have to break down and start riding the Peloton bike in my basement.

That being said, the kids and I knocked off a couple of fun things. There was another PD day at school on Friday (it’s now become clear to me that there are way more of these than I ever imagined – I may need to re-consider a new career as a grade 5 teacher, they get sabbaticals right?). So, my youngest son and I tried out a new 3D flight simulator experience in town.  We got to “fly” F-18 fighter jets. Pretty complicated set ups so I figured I’d have the advantage, but clearly the hours upon hours of video games played had prepared my son well for the battle, shooting me out of the sky repeatedly. I’m more of a Navy guy anyways.

I also took my meditation practice to a whole new level this week with a “float” experience at the spa.  One hour enclosed inside of a large egg-shaped pod floating in salt water in complete darkness with nothing but my own thoughts. Interesting sensory deprivation exercise. Still trying to decide if it was the ultimate in relaxation or torture. But my guess is that they picked up this pod unit at a Guantanamo Bay estate sale.

Working on a few fun plans for the coming week, but don’t want to get too far ahead of myself here in the event they get sidetracked with any further lockdown.

PS:  Finally began my “bake your own sourdough bread” project.  Turns out you need to grow a yeast starter for 7 days. This is proving more complicated than planned.  Stay tuned.

Well, that’s 2/3rds of the way though the sabbatical.  Even with 2 months to go, it’s starting to feel like the end is near.  And that feels a bit like stress (which I haven’t felt for some time…).  I’ve yet to sit down for some quiet thinking about what I have, or haven’t, learned so far from this time off.  I keep kicking that introspection down the road whenever it surfaces on the to do list. 

I feel like there’s still so much more to do, but a few things are conspiring against me, not the least of which is the latest round of restrictions due to COVID.  For starters, my fitness regime has taken a hit with the cancellation of hockey and tennis.  These were the anchors of my day around which I’d plan the rest of my activities (squeezed in between school drop off and pick up).  And travel restrictions continue to put a hitch in my grand vision of circumnavigating the globe by hot air balloon.  But I’m working on coming up with a somewhat scaled down travel adventure.  We’ll see.

With the older kids having a few days off school this past week, I was eager for some new mini-adventures.  On Thursday we donned our best cowboy attire from the Stampede and headed out to the Rocky Mountain foothills for some horseback trail riding.  This was a big step for us as we don’t come from a long line of cattle ranchers.  In fact, I’ve not been on a horse in the past 40 years.  Fortunately, the horses were professionals who could do the tour on autopilot. I still really want to try steer wrestling though. I think I’d be good. At least I look good in the hat. (Instagram @sabbaticaldadjon)

Was eager for another adventure on Friday, but the kids each took it upon themselves to make plans with their own friends.  This left me feeling a bit forlorn, but I guess this sabbatical isn’t only about me.

I did get out downhill skiing for the first time this year with my oldest son on Saturday.  Half day at Lake Louise then lunch at the Chateau.  Might as well do it in style or I’m not going to survive what is likely to be the longest ski season ever…

When it’s hard to come up with anything to write about, you know that it’s been kind of a wasted week. Not that I didn’t have more of the same good quality time with my family, but it was short on new adventures.  Admittedly, I’ve gotten a bit complacent. The sabbatical was meant to help break out of the status quo, not fall into another one. I will redouble my efforts to do more fun stuff…

On the positive side, I’ve used this free time recently to reach out to various old friends with whom I haven’t connected in some time.  “Busy with work” had become my justification for having lived an increasingly less social life.  Reminiscing about the good old days with these folks has been a good reminder of the many hilarious, adventurous, and dumb yet entertaining things we used to do, and should continue doing…

As an aside, one disconcerting thing that I have noticed as a result of being at home is that rarely a day goes by that an on-line purchase delivery doesn’t arrive at my front door.  I have become quite well acquainted with the UPS delivery guy.  My wife has owned up to most of the purchases, but I’ve also become drunk with the power of free next day delivery that my new Amazon Prime account brings.  It was my oldest son’s 15^th birthday this past week, and based on his pile of presents he was certainly the beneficiary of this accelerated global supply chain.

Normally Halloween would be the highlight of this week, but this year it felt like a bit of a non-event.  The house decorations were up and then down within 24 hours.  With no adult parties, and with my bigger kids no longer out on the “trick or treat” scene, and the little guy self-sufficient enough to go door to door alone (in fact more than self-sufficient as he scored 358 units of candy), this was the first year in quite some time that I didn’t get dressed up.  A shame given that on sabbatical I would have had time to come up with an epic costume (not to say the recent years’ costumes of Darryl Hall (of Hall & Oates) and former WWE superstar Jake “the Snake” Roberts weren’t epic…).   None the less, good times were had with a few close friends and some Chinese food take out (as per our long-standing family tradition).

Did get a little extra quality time with the kids this past week thanks to school PD days on Monday and Friday.  Quality time, as in racing go-carts and shooting 9mm Glocks at the gun range… (see photographic evidence on Instagram @SabbaticalDadJon).

Slowly making progress on my tennis game, having played every day last week.  Still a lot of work to do to keep up with the tennis moms though.