PopcornJackTerry

And just like that, it was autumn.

There were a couple of nights last week I was able to sleep with the windows open and the A/C off, but by mid-morning, if i wasn’t already out of the house, it was getting a little too warm to be comfortable. But, just in time for today, both the humidity and temperature dropped, there’s a consistent breeze blowing through the property, and I am able to have the house wide open.

I saw this coming a few days ago, and I don’t just mean because I was looking at the calendar or the weather forecast. I was at work this weekend, it was about 4:15 or so, and I was going downstairs to restock something when I saw the way the light was coming through the tree and spilling into the open doorway and on the floor. With that light, in that moment, it was the surest sign that the pages of the calendar had been turning, the months had been passing, and, believe it or not, it was now mid September.

Sunlight is something we naturally take for granted, but it is an unbelievably inconsistent thing. The only constant about it is its continual change. Every day at the same time it is in a different place and angle in the sky. Even if the weather is exactly the same, 6pm on July 22nd does not look the same as 6pm on September 22nd, and I think this has an effect on us we only acknowledge fleetingly, if at all. I haven’t worked at # Birds in previous Septembers, so seeing this light on this day was less about the specific moment, and more about the memories of past autumns, remembering this style of light at that time of day and what it represented.

I believe that people are inherently seasonal creatures, partially as an instinctual thing ingrained in our DNA as a survival mode for when we used to be hunter/gatherers and partially through the yearly indoctrination of starting the school year in September. For 13 of our first 18 years, the year effectively begins in September, and I think this carries over. No matter where I’ve lived and worked, there is an otherwise inexplicable dip in business the first few weeks of September. People have this “Summer is over, we need to buckle down” mentality, even if they were never actually on vacation and nothing is changing in their day to day and week to week routines. (Thankfully, they get over that quickly, and October represents the start of the three busiest months in the industry.)

I always felt a solid connection to the seasons. Autumn and Spring were my productive times, with Autumn being a period of bulk growth, foundational work and Spring would be when I would refine that growth, polish it up. Simply put, in Autumn I built the house and in Spring I decorated it. The Winter would be a period of reflection, a slumbering with the growth of the previous Autumn, helping me to decide how best to finish the growth in the Spring, and the Summer was a period of happy relaxation, a time of content confidence with the growth I had made in the past year, the strides forward I had taken.

I sometimes wonder if by moving to Florida I have done myself a disservice by separating myself from stark seasonal changes. The difference between Summer and Winter here and in Key West is nothing compared to what it was like up North, and by not having this natural reminder every 90 or so days I may be losing that instinctual connection. But today when I woke up, I wasn’t so sure about that.

Obviously there is nothing about this year that could be comparable to previous years, something I have to remind myself about when I beat myself up over the choices I’ve made and the way I’ve been living. We all cope in our own ways, and we know I don’t always have the best coping mechanisms, but there is only so much water that argument can carry. Ultimately it is up to each of us to address the reality of the situation and act accordingly. Over the last few weeks I have myself feeling more observational that usual and seeing how the pieces of my puzzle have been coming together and falling apart, and it led me to a phrase I first heard back in acting school:

“If you do what you’ve always done, you will get what you’ve always gotten.”

Now, it takes on more weight, because there are two ways I need to remember that. The first reflects back on these past several months. Nothing has gotten markedly better in the last several months in who I am and how I’m living because I haven’t acted on changing my behaviors. It could be argued that, if anything, things have been getting worse because not only am I not making the changes I need to, I am allowing myself to feel frustrated and defeated in my life, emotions that in turn fuel how I live, how I interact with others, the choices I make.

The second way that this phrase speaks to me right now is a reminder that, in a grander scheme, I have to do what I used to always do if I want to get what I used to always get. I can’t just say “Oh, it’s Autumn. Sweet. By Christmas I’ll automatically be a happier/smarter/more successful person.” Nope, not how this works. I still need to put in the work. If anything I need to more diligent than I ever have been. I am many years removed from when it was the life I actively led, and I need to dust off and rust off parts of who I am I have gotten away from. I have to develop a sense of urgency, a sense of self-confidence, and the reality that I don’t have to be happy with who I am if I know I can become the person I want to be.