It’s been almost a year since I transitioned from an unexpectedly empty to-do list to an intentional sabbatical. And since I’m literally procrastinating on my business accounting right now, I thought I’d do a personal account of what this experience has been like.

It started with one of our cats dying. Starbuck was named after the cocky and slightly crazy fighter pilot in Battlestar Galactica. She was famous for taking a swipe at your leg as you walked past, then rolling over for belly rubs. All she wanted was love, but she never fully trusted it.

One morning she ate her breakfast and curled up on her heating pad like she did most days in her older years. I heard a strange noise from the other room, and by the time I arrived, she was taking her last breaths.

Even though there’s been a lot of death in my family, and I’ve lost many pets over my lifetime, this was the first time I was present for someone's last moments. I like to think the last thing she saw before she passed was my face looking down at her, my hand cradling her head, finally assured she was loved.

It was heart-breaking, of course, but bearing witness to life, and death, in this way, gives you a new perspective. You find yourself unconsciously thinking of Mary Oliver's famous line, “What is it you plan to do with your one and precious life?”

And so I moved from a period of enjoyable inactivity to purposeful exploration. I applied for what must have seemed a puzzling array of jobs, in climate philanthropy, corporate learning and development, internal communications, program management, and nonprofit leadership. I got close on several positions, but was never made an offer.

This was, in some senses, a disappointment. I have always seen work as a vehicle for education. I only applied for jobs that excited me, jobs where I thought I could not just contribute but grow. I got tired of hearing that I was simultaneously over and under qualified.

It was all I could do not to blurt out, “Yeah, that thing you think is a problem is exactly why you should hire me!”

Thankfully, after many months of trying himself, my brilliant husband got hired for a terrific job, which allowed me to stop trying to fit in someone else’s box and start building my own.

I could have returned to my coaching business of course. It’s what I’ve been doing for the last twelve years. And that’s precisely why I wanted to try something new.

I took one writing class after another. I played around with micro memoir, where you try to tell a story from your life in 8 or 25 words. I took a long-form essay class that bordered on journalism, where I read someone’s thesis as part of my research on the invention of radar. (I’m not even sure I read my own PhD thesis after writing it.) I took a personal essay class where I finally put to paper what it was like growing up with a paranoid father and a house full of guns.

There were more classes and I loved them all. I thought I’d write a memoir as a series of essays and made lists of vignettes from my life that I thought were interesting enough to share. But each time I kept bumping up against a question I couldn’t answer: What’s the story I’m trying to tell?

So I signed up for a five-week class on story structure. It turns out I knew nothing about the topic. In fact, it was worse, because the few things I thought I knew about story structure were wrong and had to be unlearned. My family begged me to stop taking writing classes as I metaphorically pulled my hair out.

I explained to the instructor my memoir-in-essays idea and how I was struggling to find the overarching story. He bellowed, “That’s because what you’re trying to do is really hard! Why don’t you just write a novel?”

At first my mind threw up excuses. “I’ve never written fiction before!” I whined. “I don’t even know how to start something like that!”

After giving the idea some space, it grew on me. By the end of the class, I had mapped out the plot for a novel that met my instructor’s bar. I was thrilled.

But it still wasn’t the right story.

It is emerging however. Every day it gets a bit clearer and when each new piece slots into place in my head, I get so excited I forget to keep breathing. (Luckily I remember again pretty quickly)

What strikes me is that it’s taken a year to get here. I didn’t know what I wanted or even what I needed to figure it out. A year of practicing patience, following my curiosity around every blind and trusting it would all eventually make sense.

This process can’t be rushed. And yet how often do we try to force it, because we’re frightened by what the not knowing means about us? How much time do we waste doing the wrong thing, or someone else’s thing, because we didn’t take the time to figure out our thing first?

As Starbuck might say, “Stupid frakking thing couldn’t come with a handbook?”

I guess not.