A different kind of shutdown.

I am always a little short of breath in October. The month arrives a few days after another birthday and there is an sense of urgency to hurry up and get ready for the changing season ahead: from writing submissions to swapping out closets, packing away the cottons for wool, light quilts for down puffs, figuring out if my pants fit from last February and OMG closed shoes. And not to mention the blousy, overgrown garden beds. Writing has taken a way-back seat in the face of the tasks.

The result is I spin in circles and never feel like I have actually accomplished anything, the day is so short, the lists so long.

This week I booked a few days to myself in Vermont at my daughter’s empty house, another year older not wiser, lugging mountains of newspapers to catch up on, two laptops (in fairness and gratitude I was given a beautiful new Airbook for my birthday and I don’t trust it yet), four books to choose from, too many sweaters and several knitting projects. That old adage there are only so many hours in the day seems pretty obvious. But my instinct called for a reset, and my old instinct said pack it all, get’er done.

As I sit in the stillness of a sweet house set between a mountain and a river I am drinking tea, breathing the crisp air, and have some take-aways.

1. There is in reality so much time.

After I unpacked the car, put away the food, unlocked the front door, dragged a chair onto the stoop, boiled the kettle and made a cuppa I sat and didn’t think about anything except the gift of this week and that my time was my own here. I bet this took all of fifteen minutes and it was NOT a waste of time. In fact, I felt it expanded the hour.

2. What I really needed to do (and drive four hours to realize) was just think.

The best writing — the blogs, the essays, the flash memoir, the submission bio’s — happens to me in stillness. That’s when can let my brain receive a sentence. That’s when I run with it. All this tasking has shut it down. It has taken two days of staring into solitude to realize I can just let the season change without my help.

3. There are no cider donuts to be found here. Vermont, come on. Stillness requires donuts.

I am heading out to the store now, stopping along the way at a few farm stands, really needing nothing just meandering the county, looking at the land breathing. Then I will get back to things. Maybe.

Don’t put your phone in your pocket. Look at the sky for a while. Drink a little hot beverage. Think about the colors. Or lack of color. Or the birdsong. Or your gratitude that the trash truck is whining down the street doing its job. Or the dog that is not yours is barking at nothing. Apply no judgement. Feel the time. It is all yours.

And somebody tell me where to get a cider donut, stat.