What I think more than anything else is that I feel more alive than I had felt before. Sometimes "alive" is a thin razor's edge away from the cold, bracing wind of fear.

I noticed this thing that happened over the weekend, on Saturday. I started thinking about what I needed to get done before Monday. Some weekends I was able to not give Monday too much power, and other weekends, I was far less successful.

Self-care is not a hamburger, it is not a to-do list of stuff, achieved or looked at in a factory assembly line fashion. As I work with coaching clients, I am not crafting it like a hamburger. I'm starting with the type of self-care that is about things like knowing that your life is fully in integrity.

In September, the very day that I decided that I would let go of teaching, the first symptoms hit of what I would now tentatively diagnose as an ulcer. I don't recall anyone talking about feeling as if they were getting an ulcer.