I returned this afternoon from another whirlwind of airports, security lines, and the roar of aircraft engines from my most recent trip to New York. It was your typical business trip: take the first flight out on Monday and come back on the first flight back on Wednesday morning, making sure you check the boxes of jetlag, late nights, and early mornings to guarantee a successful path towards exhaustion. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to be exhausted. As the saying goes, there’s no rest for the weary. Unless you make time for it, that is.

I recently discovered on my business trips, much to my surprise, that there’s quite a few CRM partners out there that actually read my blog. Hi! J For those of you who haven’t run into me, hopefully we will soon—my latest spat of trips are for the CRM Titan Global Readiness Tour as the technical track presenter. After knocking down San Francisco and New York with my teammates, I’m slated to present in Seattle, Dubai, Tel Aviv, Moscow, Milan, Madrid, and Amsterdam. It’s no secret, especially if you’re reading my blog, that I love to travel, but with CRM 5 planning under way, I also need to stay focused on the core of my job, revving the intellectual horsepower of my brain to design new features. For the meantime, until about the 10^th of November, this leaves me burning the candle at both ends, working through the evening in the great cafes of Seattle and the world.

This is the part where my parents and my close friends worry if I’m pushing myself too hard. It’s like sprinting—exhilarating for a little while, but subject to burn out if you don’t learn to pace.

I had the opportunity last weekend to go on a retreat that the Wilderness Ministry at my church put together at Mt. Baker. I had signed up weeks ago, but on the Wednesday before the retreat was to start, I started to wonder if I could afford to go. I needed to catch up on e-mail. I needed to stay on top of my bugs and keep my developers unblocked. I needed to dig deeper into perf and scale work. I needed to do some more thinking around CRM 5. I was flying out to New York at 7a on Monday and the presentation wasn’t ready. More time, more time, I needed more time!

As I pondered my options, two sermons that my pastor gave recently on subject of Sabbath came to mind. The whole idea of Sabbath, resting, is to set aside a time to step out of the raging river that consumes us during the week to focus on mind, spirit, and spirituality. It sounds really good in concept, but who has time for the Sabbath? Stop treading the waters for a day and you’ll drown. But if there’s anything to learn from my time listening to Richard, it’s that sometimes one simply needs to make the time. Take the leap of faith, embrace a weekend of not working.

I went. I turned off my cell phone, left the laptop at home, and went to Baker.

“Come to me you who are weary and I shall give you rest.”

The retreat was held in this awesome four story A-Frame mountain chalet, filled with the presence of a hundred personalities. Amazingly for the first week of October, Baker had gotten dumped on by snow—1.5 to 3 feet! When the same retreat was held last year, it was 75 degrees and sunny outside. This year it was hovering in the 30s. Great time to make use of the insane amount of merchandise I’ve purchased from REI.

Friday night, Thien-An convinced me to sleep out on the snow. I had a tarp below and above me to keep me dry and I fell asleep listening to the tarp crinkle ever so slightly under the impact of a hundred falling snowflakes. I had hoped to wake up covered in snow, but it was the sound of rain from the warm morning light that woke me up. On Saturday I donned my gaiters (one of my favorite pieces of gear) went hiking through the snow in complete whiteout conditions to arrive at Artist Point with newly made friends, returning to the chalet and hot chocolate to warm our hands three miles out later.

It was wonderful. To spend time in the outdoors, hanging out with fun people, focusing on building bonds with each other and God. By Saturday afternoon I felt more fulfilled and joyful in my core than I have in weeks. Maybe months.

I knew I was weary. I just forgot how great it feels to rest.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 6:53 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.