How It’s (Really) Going

… my life looks so different these days, and I’m so grateful …

Leaf blowers are the soundtrack of autumn. I give up.

It’s trite to say I hate leaf blowers, so I’ll say only this: I swerve on my neighborhood walks to avoid them when I can. But sometimes they just appear. A lawn service truck descends on a yard ahead and there’s nowhere left to swerve. My only option is dead ahead, into that dust-up of sensorial overwhelm.

I squint and brace and pull the collar of my shirt up over my nose because oooh … this might hurt a little.

On my walk today I passed a yard with the leaves still strewn on top of the grass, a tapestry of ruby and yellow. It was lovely just the way it was.

It’s been months now since I left my corporate job. So many months. Whole seasons have passed as I changed the shape of my days. Spring became summer became fall — and here we are in the darkest of our days already.

Back when I was deciding to leave my job, in the heightened drama of a potentially portentious decision, things felt practically atomic. But in the aftermath there has been no nuclear fallout. Only relief. Or maybe more than just relief. Relief and wonder. Relief and renewed curiosity. Relief and ease.

My last few years at that job, every day felt like working under some DeLilloian airborne toxic event. It was ominous and noxious and there was no outrunning it.

I tried every trick to contort the things I had control of – my mindset, my processes, my approach, my internal and external supports, my mantras, my resistance, my therapists. In the end, there was nothing in me that could make it bearable. Because the problem wasn’t in me. It was there in the context, and the only solution was to change the context.

This is how it’s going: There is a lightness in my days. Most days the lightness of my being is so bearable I almost can’t remember how unbearable it had all become.

This is how it’s going: It’s autumn now. Darkness rolls in before dinner is on the table. But it’s ok, because my capacity is so altered. I’m here with the energy to make soups – so many soups. My son told me over the weekend, I’m enjoying your little soup phase, Mom. I basked in the glow of that perfect compliment and made yet another soup.

This is how it’s going: Turkey chili with pumpkin. Chicken meatball soup with ginger and garlic and a coconut milk broth. Smoked turkey and white bean soup served with cornbread muffins. Tortellini soup with local sausage and chopped spinach and a brightly acidic tomato broth. Chicken and dumpling soup with gnocchi subbed in for the dumplings, which sparked all of my autumnal joy.

This is how it’s going: November has been a parade of soups, so many you can almost forget the darkness.

This is how it’s going: Playing with my daily schedule, tweaking it so that my days feel good and are productive, has been a surprising pleasure.

How to: Work half a day, exercise, write, pick the kids up from school, get dinner on the table, and log in for my virtual class three nights a week, while still making time for a hot-toddy-catch-up with my husband before I tumble into bed? On it.

Approaching it with curiosity. Figuring out how to line up my to-dos so that I get to enjoy the little window of time with the kids between school and dinner when they’re chatty and energized. Making sure I’m not over-extending myself (but also making sure I don’t just nap the afternoons away). All of this has been an exercise in intentionality. And in the midst of it all, I’m a better, brighter, sure-er version of myself than I’ve been in so long.

This is how it’s going: I wake up every morning and that never dissolving disc of dread that had been lodged in my throat for so long is just … gone. What a feeling.

This is how it’s going: Playing with my writing process. Giving up my strangle-hold on morning writing because it doesn’t quite fit the new schedule. Finding other ways to fit writing in and feel good about what I’m producing. Introducing flexibility into my process. All of it has been a gift of this chapter of time.

This is how it’s going: My days look different. There is more good in them. Less awfulness.

I’ve written more this year than any other year, racked up an impressive stable of rejections, published works, made writing and non-writing friends, met up for coffee, taken walks, volunteered, snuggled up with my kids to watch a movie I didn’t really want to watch, but I’m in it for the snuggle …

Six months later, Friends, things are going so incredibly well.