What is in my future?

This week, on Monday, I started my leave from CALOR, the organization I founded, after 21 years of uninterrupted services. After consulting with my husband, who has always been supportive, and my doctor, we determined that I needed a break to focus on my health and my family, and to decide what to do in the future.

I have been feeling burned out. Overwhelmed with shifts in funding and other changes that I could not control, but that nevertheless affected me. I have been feeling torn between being able to provide direct services and being buried in paperwork, that, while important, it can be cumbersome. At the end of the day, I was feeling drained, but not the kind of drain you feel when you accomplish something good. It was a feeling of having been doing a lot and still not having done much. I have always taken pride of having an organized desk, and suddenly my desk was covered with papers and files and reports...I felt defeated. I was losing patience with simple things like emails; I wanted to tell people off, and had little tolerance for non-sense. Yes, it was time to take a break, and this past Monday I started phasing out. I have started with a partial leave for the next two weeks, and then on June 1st I will go on full leave for at least one month.

I hope to be able to think things through while on leave. I need to determine what I will be doing in the near future. Going back to school has been on my mind for a while, but I need to give it serious thought. And I also think that it may be time to look for new horizons and allow others at CALOR to take on stronger leadership roles. I feel like I need a new beginning, that the HIV/AIDS field is not for me any longer. But then I get sudden bursts of energy and inspiration, and I wonder if what I just need is to reposition myself in this field that has been my field for so many years.

Yesterday, for example, I went to an HIV Leadership Dinner, "Rules of Engagement," organized by a pharmaceutical. I was in a room full of committed social workers and service providers, and their energy and dedication sparked a new interest on me, a new desire to recommit to the fight of HIV/AIDS. Do I just need a break to renew myself, to peel off a layer, like an onion, and expose a new, fresh level of me?  Only time will tell.

My commitment to myself, to my clients, and to my colleagues.

Meanwhile, the first week on leave has been interesting. I find myself at home not knowing exactly what to do. Do I start the long overdue Spring cleaning that my house needs? Do I continue with my scrapbook project and finally organize the boxes of pictures I have collected over the years? Most of the days what has really happened is that I end up sitting in front of the TV, watching shows that I could not be caught dead watching in other circumstances. I feel I am decompressing. I went out for a run in the park and it was lovely, but then the weather got cold again and I just don't have the guts to run in cold weather. 

I have also continued working on my daughters' graduations, and the party we are organizing for them. It is going to be a very busy time, with a Ileana leaving for the class trip to Washington DC on the 30th of May, Amanda's Senior Luncheon on May 31, her Prom on June 6, Ileana's graduation on June 11th, Amanda's graduation on June 12, their graduation party on the 16th, and finally Ileana's 8th grade luncheon on the 17th. Whew! Just writing this got me tired! But I am looking forward to spending these special times with my daughters. These are times to be cherished and fully enjoyed and I am set on doing just that.

Invitation to my daughters' graduation party. Thanks to my nephew Fernando Deida for designing it!

So, what will happen in the future? I don't know; I can't tell the future. But I am willing to welcome whatever it brings to me and my family. Until that time, I will enjoy this time off and make the best of it. I will do like snakes, shed my old skin rapidly; climb out of the old skin and leaving it behind in one long piece. The new skin will go along with my future. And it will be a good one; I know it.