Endings are hard.
Yet Autumn is possibly the most psychologically delicious season. Ask people what their favourite season is – most of my friends say Autumn.
It has a warm, rich feeling – bonfires, cider, crunching leaves, a particular kind of golden sunshine.
But part of the appeal for me, I think, was that it spite of nature bringing its blooming to a close, Fall always felt like a time of beginning. Every year, school would start again – a clean slate of possibility.
I like beginnings: the excitement and zing of opportunity yet-to-be-unlocked.
But how much of that push toward beginning was fighting the natural rhythm of the seasons?
Now that I am no longer in school – maybe this is a time to let myself feel more purely life’s natural pulse.
In my late night googling, I stumbled across this article by Roger Robinson called ‘How To Completely Destroy Your Artistic Life‘, where he breaks down warning signs. Number one:
“If an artist is starting too many projects, but none of them ever seemed finished, before starting yet another one. This is one I see alot in artists sabotaging themselves.”
That has the harsh ring of truth.
While I ascribe to Elizabeth Gilbert’s view that some of us are hummingbirds and some of us are jackhammers, and I believe that eclecticism should be celebrated, it can also become a trap.
There were so many projects I had to abandon midstream when I wasn’t well, or things left unfinished. There are new ideas bubbling, but I haven’t closed the loop of the old ones, either by bringing them to a state where they feel complete, or by releasing them back into the wild.
While I do feel the tendrils of growing possibility – like the ivy that is cunningly snaking its way up our wall, growing in defiance of the coming winter – I think it would do my good to try to embrace the rest of this year as a time of endings.
It’s time to let go: of the clutter, the unfinished projects, the various mental loops I am keeping open in expectation of an arrival that never comes.
This Autumn, I’d like to really feel the seasons. And savour the process of endings.
Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash