Why I Wanted To Walk Away

17 more sleeps till I step on a Qantas flight to return my well-rounded tush to Washington DC. I say that with a sigh.

I will admit that when Jeff told me about our chance to live in Australia for 6-12 months, one of the thoughts that zipped through my mind was "oh, hell yes, I'd love to walk away from a few things for a while". I bet we all have things in our life that we'd like an excuse to walk away from, even for just a little bit.

And it has been nice, I admit it. But in the last couple of weeks my DC life has resurrected itself in all its messiness, all its joys, all its pains.

Prison. A dear friend is going to prison in October for a federally-mandated minimum of five years. I received a letter from him today, handwritten since he's on the equivalent of house arrest and is not allowed access to a computer. I laid my hands on it before I read it, knowing that his hands had also touched it and it's as close as we can get right now. Handwritten letters have that power; email does not.

He's being honest about where he is and what life is about for him right now. He's also being honest about the people that have stepped up to tell him that he still matters to them, even people who were merely co-workers before. That made me cry. I intend to visit him as often as I can for these 5 or more years.

Surgery. My mom is very anxious to have surgery to replace an artificial knee that has quit working. Both her health and her age make this a difficult decision and it falls on we three daughters to, ultimately, make the decision. Surgery will be preceeded by a pile of doctors appointments (which we have to arrange and attend) and followed by up to a year of PT (which we will have to support her through, which historically has been nightmarish). If the doctors agree, it will still be a difficult decision to make and we may have to say "no", despite how desperately Mom wants it.

On top of that, both Jeff and one of my sisters also need surgery this fall.

Organizational chaos. An organization I am deeply engaged in, even 9500 miles away, is going through another spasm of change, thanks to a firing. The person fired is a friend (and someone I've come to depend on), the people doing the firing are friends, the larger community (who are divided about this) are friends. In responding to what I know of the events, I've managed to hurt some people deeply. This organization is struggling and I desperately want them to survive the challenges facing them. The chaos continues.

Disintegrating relationships. Our housemate -- with whom we own our house -- has been retreating more and more into her self for a couple of years. This last year she effectively disconnected from us, not returning our emails or letters or answering our phone calls. We had to have our mail forwarded to another friend since we discovered we couldn't rely on our housemate to keep us updated or forward our mail.

That's not the relationship we all aspired to when we decided to live together. I don't know that I have to do anything about this when I get home other than accept that it's unlikely to get better.

And, oh yeah, I need to re-build my practice.

New opportunities. Going home means also going back to some exciting stuff, professionally -- workshops, books, teaching, and new partnerships. Those all require a lot of work, planning, and organizing but I am excited about them.

There are other things that will make it good to be back home but my escape from my DC responsibilities is about to come to an end. Back to the real world...