Taking Time Off

I hope you’ve had a good summer and things are going okay. After an unplanned summer off, I’m wading back in to sending the newsletter, writing, and podcasting.

Summer is my lowest energy time of year. Every year, around the end of May/beginning of June, the dread starts to set in. Summer is bright, humid, and hot, and it’s full of expectations like put on a bathing suit and get in water and be happy it’s light until 9pm.

Summer is crowded and pushy, and it all feels like wearing a sweaty shoe that’s too tight. I have a theory that the reason so many people love summer is because of being out of school for summer vacation, and that whatever season we were out of school would be our favorite because the thing we actually loved was not going to school.

I’m also a person whose favorite season is winter. I like grey, rain, dreary, and cold. I like how unraveled nature is after the leaves fall, how plain the world is. My energy is highest in winter, I am the polar opposite of a bear.

I can usually muddle through. But this summer, I just…didn’t. Once I didn’t put out a podcast on the day I’d planned, it was easier to not do it again. Then again. And then I lost my momentum, which is one of the things that causes me great sturm und drang. Losing my momentum is the bane of my existence. If I get going I can keep going, but if I stop, restarting isn’t like picking up where I left off, it’s like starting all over again. It’s ponderous. Sometimes colossal.

But, I’ve learned I can start again. I don't give myself as much shit about these pauses, and I try to be more aware of what’s happening in my life that’s caused a shift in my routine, even though I still wind up thinking nothing should have changed more often than I'd like to.

The past five months have held a lot of things. Things like moving back in with my husband after six years of living apart, logic says you move on after the last box is unpacked. But that’s not actually how it goes. My daughter moving out and into her own place also feels like you should just easy breezy go to bed for the first time in twenty-one years with a different permanent address than the first child you birthed no biggie, but it’s big. When the vet comes to your house to lovingly put your sixteen year old dog to sleep on a Thursday night, it's not just over with when she comes back a week later holding out a sympathy card and a heavy beautifully carved wooden box holding your beloved dog's ashes.

Our experiences affect us. They matter. Sometimes it feels like I’m trying to manage my life instead of live it. Like my life experiences are check boxes. Move in. Check. Move out. Check. Say goodbye. Check.

It feels important to recognize the depth of the past five months. Life has looked fine from the outside, and it is fine. I’m glad to be living with my husband again. We found a house we can afford that lets us both have our own bedrooms and separate spaces, and it is glorious. Moving out has been good for my daughter, she's finding her way in the world. Saying goodbye to our sweet Aussie, Figgy, was heartbreaking, but she was so tired and ready.

Telling those things is one thing. Thinking about them is another thing. Experiencing them is another thing too, and that's what echoes and reverberates around my life, changing things, changing me, no matter if it should or not.

It’s not about having enough discipline or willpower to continue doing or keeping things the same. It’s recognizing that the shifts that happen are part of the experience of being alive, not judgements about me as a person. So much of our relationships with ourselves can be about how we aren’t living up to expectations or aren’t doing it like we should, but I’m not sure that what my life expects agrees with those things. I think my life understands me. Restarting has been more about…will I understand it?

Life has rhythms that don’t give a damn about check boxes and shoulds. Sense and experience don’t know the word timeline. Just like how the leaves know when to change and fall, or when to bud and begin again, so do we.

I guess I could feel ashamed that I let my podcast drop off, that I stopped writing. I haven’t kept up like I wanted to with some things that are important to me this summer. The past five months have been a season in the sense that new things budded and grew, they went from new to here to this is life now.

Just like the late summer leaves, it feels like I’m ready for a new season too. I don’t imagine the leaves feel ashamed of themselves wilting because it was dry this summer, and so hot. They lived in the world they were in.

I’m doing that too.