People keep asking if I am excited about the start of my sabbatical. On the one hand I want (and do) say why yes, yes I am. On the other hand, I’m not quite sure when it really starts. It’s not as clear cut as Thomas Cole’s voyager, who floats out of the dark cave and, voilà, his journey has begun. Maybe it starts on the last day that I have real responsibilities on my campus (today); maybe it’s later this summer when I settle down from a series of very cool travel opportunities and into the big research project; maybe it’s on the first day of the fall term at 9 AM when I will be in my slippers drinking coffee and tip-tap-typing on a laptop rather than in serious shoes in front of a classroom full of sophomore architecture majors and revealing the wonders of the syllabus.
For lack of a better reason, for the sake of this blog, and recording (at least for my own sake) these fourteen months that I am more beholden to my muse than to an academic calendar, let’s say today. At the conclusion of my university’s annual spring faculty workshop, I am donezo, bags packed, figuratively and literally, ready to take off on a great big adventure.
P.S. Cole’s big blustery four-part Voyage of Life is at the National Gallery.
Postcards from Sabbatical-land 