Replacing my battery

See you in a few weeks, I'm heading out on vacation

Sometimes life hits you over the head with a metaphor.

This weekend, my car decided to not start when I was somewhere rather inconvenient. Apparently the battery was dead. We managed to get a jump and got on our way, but then I was driving around in a car with a dead battery. Going anywhere with a dead battery means you need to arrange for a jump every time you shut the car off. I think this is not unlike how I’ve felt about my own drive lately.

They say that you take vacations to recharge your batteries. In the six years since my faculty position turned into a thing with primarily administrative duties, I made a point to take care of myself and make sure that I periodically had time away from work, because I knew this was the only sustainable way of moving forward. I was making a point to recharge my battery. I have a vacation scheduled through the end of the month. That should do it, right?!

But just like my car, I’ve found out that my battery will stop taking a charge. The alternator was working just fine, so I know it was the battery that needed to be replaced.

This is about how I felt about time off during weekends and periodic breaks. My own battery wasn’t taking the charge. It needed to be replaced.

When I came back from this vacation, I am replacing my battery by stepping away from my current role and taking a year-long sabbatical. I told folks on campus, “See you in August 2025!” I’m particularly psyched about my project which will radically redirect the work in my lab to address some big questions that I’ve been mulling over for years, but never built had the activation energy to launch.

Part of my sabbatical priorities include writing more here, and a book project, as well as this new research thrust. So I’m not going away at all. But you won’t see me here much until I’m recombobulated after vacation, probably the second week of August. Stay cool and safe over the next few weeks, everybody.

It’s hard to separate the all of our research and career and vacation stuff from the social context, and because the next several months in these United States are going to be really hard on all of us, let’s remember to take care of one another as we face this common challenge. This might be a pick-me-up: