Unto the Hills

Hi. I'm the Friar, a social sciences Ph.D. student in a Midwestern city. I'm on a small sort of retreat in the suburbs taking care of my good friend C--'s house and dog while she's away.

For as far back as I can clearly and continuously remember -- though that's not very far any more -- my life has been largely unexamined, largely undirected. I do what I'm told. When not told to do anything, I do whatever comes to mind first, unless it appears hard, in which case I start something else.

In the month of June, though, that won't work very well. No one will be around to tell me what I should do all that often. The obvious nearby places for me to go waste my time -- not working at my office, not working at the corner Starbucks, and so on -- will instead all be fifteen minutes away by car. The Internet will only be accessible from one inconvenient spot in the house where I'll have to kneel on the floor to use it, and there won't be any such thing as ESPN in here.

Over these three to four weeks, I'll be working to recenter, to demonstrate and teach to myself a renewed capacity for purposefulness that will be necessary for the home stretch of my doctoral work over the next two years. Perhaps I won't be here long enough to get very far, but I'll be at least a slightly better-working person when I emerge.

I'll also be working, but not very much, I don't think. I mean to get myself used to scheduling my activities -- caring for a dog will help me along with that -- and much of what I mean to schedule for this retreat period is not my proper work but setting myself up with the capability to both begin and finish those pieces of work with which I have had difficulty doing either of late.

I'll be stopping late in the evenings to do something else important. I'll be examining, recounting and reflecting on, my ongoing life. The examination may not be very deep, especially at first, but, like the rest of what I'm setting out to gain, even starting a pilot program of gains in examination-of-life will be of great value. Look for descriptions of what I've been up to each day and plans for the next day and the next week.

I'll be praying, regularly and frequently, perhaps as much as four times a day. Like everything else, when I start, it will be rudimentary. It will get better as it goes.

Of course, I'll also be watching over three furry friends, C--'s dog and my own two cats, who don't know or trust each other very well yet, keeping them out of trouble with themselves and one another. I'm sure they'll soak all my spare attention right up.