Today is the one-year anniversary of my last day of employment before embarking on the sabbatical. My one-year unemployment anniversary. One whole year of sabbatical, of mini-retirement, of explorations uninhibited by corporate vacation limits and zooms.

I’ve been dreading this day, in the way that I always dread most significant markers of the passage of time from birthdays to regular anniversaries, except with more anxiety because it means my magical mini-retirement will come to an end soon and I have to figure out what to do next beyond the next country to go to and book to read.

Now that the day is here, I’m taking it about as I expected. A tinge of sadness (maybe nostalgia is the better word; is there a word for anticipated saudade?). A great deal of fear about the future (if in one year of unconstrained explorations I haven’t figured out exactly what I want to do, how could I ever? What if I never do? How will I get used to normal life again after a year that was this good, this full of life and experiences and beautiful places?). I want to say that I am only, or at least mostly, just excited about a new life and new project ahead and all of its possibilities. I want to be. But if I’m being honest, at least until I know what the next thing will be, I have more fear than excitement. This is a critical personality flaw, I know, but it’s true nonetheless. I’ve never dealt peacefully with change.

”The world is nothing but change” — Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time.

Time has been an obsession of mine since I can remember. If you had asked ten-year-old me what my greatest fear was, I’m pretty sure I would already have answered “wasting the time I have” or “running out of time.” This paranoia worsened considerably over the past five years or so as I watched an inordinate amount of people close to me die earlier than expected, eventually leading me to go on the sabbatical.

I’ve been simultaneously reading two somewhat opposite books about time in the last few days: one about mindfulness meditation, because I’d like to be less freaked out by worries about the past and the future and more present in what I am living now, which is arguably the only thing that is real and that matters; and another book called The Order of Time by a theoretical physicist explaining that time is not what we think it is and the “present” doesn’t actually exist. I’m not sure how I feel about this, having worked so hard for so long to internalize that the present not only exists but is the only thing that exists and matters. I guess this is partly why I’m not a theoretical physicist.

”We inhabit time as fish live in water. Our being is being in time.” — Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time.

I’m trying to reorient my mind’s eye away from the fear and anxiety over the passage of time and towards endless gratitude for having been able to do this. I know that most people never get to, or only experience something similar to this in a traditional retirement — closer to the end of life, when you may or may not have the physical ability to go chasing waterfalls. I know that what I’ve done is worth much more than the sum I’ve spent on it. This time I bought, this amount of concentrated living and learning, is priceless — no matter what happens tomorrow.