The chapter in the Feynman book that is resonating with me most strongly right now as I am returning from a year on sabbatical is “The Dignified Professor.” On page 171, he writes about not doing research when he starts his first teaching job. He writes about how he underestimated just how much work it is to be a good teacher. Teaching “burned him out.” Then, as he begins to adjust to being a professor, the impulse and drive to do research begins to return. On page 173, he writes, “…I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it.” He goes on the describe how observing a wobbling plate in the cafeteria ends in work for which he gets the Nobel prize.

Before my sabbatical, over the seven years that I had been at City Tech, I too had lost the joy in practicing my discipline which is photography. Little by little, I felt more and more guilt for not doing as much photography as I thought I should be. And at first on my sabbatical, all I was thinking about was quantity. As the year progressed, the “play” as Feynman would say returned. And the work got better. By fooling around to see what would happen, my newest and I think best body of work to date on the idea of the urban estuary started to happen. I don’t feel like I am making this work happen, willing it through discipline, it is just flowing out of working. I hope as I return to City Tech that I can keep Feynman in my mind as an example and remember that the best work begins with the pleasure of play.