Autumn and Long Goodbyes: Finding Home 3.6
Happy October, friends! Phew, what a month. I sat down to write a new Tiny Letter, only to realize I'd already drafted one either late last month or early in this one. So... why reinvent the email letter, right? :) A full October is coming to an end, it feels like Halloween is done (probably because we had our party last night), and I am currently super tired (the good kind).
So, this is just to say October is still my favorite month in a lot of ways, even though my feelings about its favorite month status have become a little more complex lately. The following essay is something I wrote near the beginning of the month, with a few edits to bring it up to date. Read on for some autumn musings, personal news, and, if you make it to the very end, some cheesy fun from my Poetry Pub friends.
May the final days of October be lovely and the Great Pumpkin never doubt your sincerity. 🎃
At the time of this writing, it is gray and cold, the last few sips of coffee are cold in my cup, and I can feel the first hints of the autumn funk settling in my soul. It’s a dull sadness, not enough to say I’m feeling down, but enough that it hovers on the edges of my awareness and drains the creative energy right out.
There is something bittersweet in the changing of the seasons.
Autumn, in some ways, is my favorite time of year. It always has been.
There’s a golden magic as the sun sets, the first hint of color in the trees that will eventually give way to a bloom of red, orange, and yellow on every roadside. There is the hum of intellectual motivation at the beginning of the school year. There is time with creative friends and fresh energy and the promises of Hutchmoot and Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, family time and traditions, and slowly bidding the old year goodbye.
In my last letter, I talked about marking anniversaries. Perhaps this is a recurring theme. I’m about marking endings too.
***
Autumn, in some ways, is my saddest time of year. This is a new development.
It is the shortening of days, made even more harsh when we turn back the clock. It is lighting the heaters and pulling sweaters from their storage. It is feeling the encroaching winter and forgettting to take Vitamin D and a calendar that quickly fills when all I’d like to do is walk through the woods and watch the leaves turn. It is knowing the holiday season will pass too soon, and then it will be winter. Then there will be 4pm darkness before the days incrementally lengthen toward spring. There will be dead branches and dirty snow.
But there will also be homemade soup and curry and an excuse to drink hot tea all day. There will be time to reflect on the year past and look forward to the year to come, and there will be candlelight and quiet afternoons with a thick blanket and a thicker novel I’ve been meaning to read.
Winter is hard on the soul. But even at its darkest, there is beauty. It is mundane and it is magic.
***
I’m okay with things ending. Most things anyway. I think I learned to do this better when I moved from my Florida hometown to a New England city. In the months between deciding to move and crossing the threshold of a tiny third floor apartment, I found plenty of space to say goodbye. To a job I enjoyed, to being geographically close to some of my oldest friends, to palm tree-lined streets and Spanish moss and the neverending brightness and humidity.
Maybe that’s why I struggle to say goodbye to summer. Because in those bright days where the trees explode with green, I feel the sun on my body, and she remembers home.
But right. Endings.
When I take my time to say goodbye, reflect on the good that was, even when the good to come is exciting, and take the time to be here — on this day, with this weather, with particular work and responsibilities and appointments to keep — it's somewhat like building a small altar. Sometimes long goodbyes are simply a way to say, "I was here. This mattered. And goodness, it was beautiful."
The moment came, and it went. I won’t remember every detail. Even a photo, a status update, can’t capture all of it.
But it was real. And so very good.
***
SO SPEAKING OF CHANGES...
Earlier this month I got confirmation about some big changes in my work life that I can’t fully talk about yet, and I’m guessing that’s why I’ve got changing seasons and bittersweet endings on the mind. Simply put, as of the end of the year, my time in radio will be done. (Unless there's some production or voice tracking work out there for me that I can do from home that I don't know about yet.)
To be honest, I alternate between completely fine/peaceful and completely stressed about job hunting. And yet, I’m not surprised by this development, and on a good day, I'm excited about the future! So that said, I’d appreciate your prayers and encouragement as I navigate some new (good! But different) territory, and the grace to figure out where to go next.
And if you’re looking for a freelance writer, editor, podcast producer, or friendly voiceover person, well… I’ve got a shiny new Work with Me page on my website detailing my odd collection of semi-marketable skills.
BUT ON THE OTHER HAND...
Thank you so much for sticking with this, even when it’s even less than monthly-ish. I haven’t been writing a ton lately, truth be told. But part of that is because I’m doing something very new and fun… as of this fall, I’m in spiritual direction training with the Pax Center!
From now until June, I’ll be reading a ton of books, taking classes in Cambridge, writing papers and journals, and deepening my knowledge and practice of classic Christian disciplines and spiritual formation. So basically, I’ve gone back to school. I just had my second class last weekend, and recently had first meetings with two directees that I’ll be working with for the duration of the program, and y’all… I love this so much. I promise I’ll be writing more about this, but for now let’s just say everything about it feels so natural and right.
So, there you have it. One thing is ending and another thing is beginning. But I'm also very much in the messy middle of it all.
AND NOW SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!
I promised something fun and poetry related if you stuck with this letter all the way to the end! You may know that around this time last year Chris and I launched The Poetry Pub, a Facebook writing community for poets inspired by the open mics we hosted at Hutchmoot. Well, this merry band of poets has steadily grown, so much so that we launched The Poetry Pub website. And last week we released a really weird mini-chapbook that I adore.
Wait, cheese poems? Yes, cheese poems. Why? Well, you'll just have to click here to find out and download our spontaneous digital mini-chapbook. :) Let's just say all of these poems were written within the span of 24 hours just so we could basically troll the HM open mic with poems about cheese. Truly, these are my people.
I think that'll do it for this month. Thanks for hanging in there with me. Feel free to hit reply to share your thoughts, feelings, complaints, job leads, and/or spontaneous cheese poems. Until next time!
Peace,
Jen // jenroseyokel.com