BreakAway advocates for taking time off and pursuing balance. A one-year faraway sabbatical is the rare grand slam. But even hobbies help advance your chance for sanity.

Gardening is a good one. You get some exercise, you work with nature, and you get off your butt and into the curative outdoors. Moreover, watching your garden grow can be a most magical experience.

Lettuce not forget, however, the hazards of gardening. My pollinator-friendly yard is just buzzing with hyper bees and hornets. The steep hillside hosts unseen holes and rocks, like wipe-out booby traps. And even this dang weed carries enough burrs to bury your clothes and gloves; I’ve had to toss much grubby gardening garb—and yanked it from hair and flesh.

Of course, during most growing seasons, I’ve stayed ahead of these weeds and avoided such terrible entanglements. But not this summer. There’s a lesson here, perhaps a metaphor. And I guess I’ll keep learning it—the painful way.