mindfully entering the new year

 Hey, it's 2022! Unlike most everyone else in higher ed, I'm feeling all right, mostly because I continue to be on sabbatical, where I'm doing work I enjoy. I'm holding onto that as long as I can.

As I mentioned in a past post, one of the personal/professional outcomes so far from my sabbatical has been increased mindfulness. I'm less stressed and therefore less reactive. I took the time to reflect on the experiences of the past two years and tried to learn and grow from them. I understand now the ways that I need to think less about reacting to situations that trigger strong emotional responses and instead creating space to respond/act thoughtfully and, well, mindfully.

With this in mind, I have been thinking about trying to create a better meditation/yoga practice. Our university gave us a subscription to Headspace, so I have tools to learn more about meditation and to do guided meditation. Along with that, I love doing yoga--but I often don't make the time. In the past, my motivation to do yoga was more about the physical asana rather than the mindfulness component, but now, it's a mixture of both, perhaps equally both. I signed up for the YWA Move January yoga challenge (challenge? program?) in an effort to spend a bit of time on the mat.

These are sort of resolutions, but not really--I think I'm just using the start of the year to motivate me to commit to mindfulness practices that I've been thinking about for a while now. And I like that I am not going into these practices with any expectation for changing my physical body (except for maybe just overall attention to mobility, which is great given how much I'm sitting). Overall, these feels like a balanced, anti-diet approach to using New Years to make a change. It's a small change. It's an extension of work I'm already doing. And it's motivated by bigger things--the knowledge that these skills will hopefully help me transition back to the "normal" academic work environment in a way that helps me maintain my energy and take care of myself.

This transition from sabbatical back to the typical academic year is something I'll be ruminating on the next few months. It's a long way off (August!), but I know it'll be here quickly. And it's something I want to be able to engage with intentionally and in a way that allows me to carry what I learned into potentially challenging and tense work environments, hopefully in a way that also supports my colleagues and friends. I don't want to just fall back into the miserable Jenn I was at the end of the spring 2021 semester, so I'll be making efforts to avoid doing just that.