Every year, sometime around the first morning I walk outside and think, Ohhhh, it’s sweater weather, I decide my entire life needs an overhaul.
Not a little refresh.
An overhaul.
Suddenly I need to clean out every closet, rearrange the living room, buy new notebooks, make soup, organize my finances, change my morning routine, plant something, get rid of half my clothes and become the kind of woman who lights a candle at 4:30 in the afternoon instead of complaining that it’s already dark.
Fall does something to me.
And for years, I assumed it was because fall was the season when I finally got my shit together.
Summer Katy is a little loosey-goosey.
She’s outside. She’s going places. She’s saying yes to things. She’s eating dinner at 8:30 because somehow it’s still light out and time has ceased to exist.
Then September rolls around and Winter Katy needs different things than Summer Katy.
The air changes. The kids go back to school. The windows open. The calendar starts looking like a calendar again.
And suddenly I want structure.
I want routine.
I want to know what’s for dinner.
I want to clean the basement.
I want to move the couch.
I want to start a new business.
Okay, that last one might just be me.
But I don’t think the urge to change everything in fall is actually about becoming a better version of ourselves.
I think it’s about noticing that we’ve changed.
The season changes before we realize we have
Nature is very good at transition.
It doesn’t hold a meeting about it.
The tree doesn’t stand there in October thinking, Jesus Christ, I really need to work on my leaf retention.
It lets go.
The garden starts dying back.
The days get shorter.
Everything that spent summer growing and producing and blooming starts turning inward.
Meanwhile, we’re over here expecting ourselves to maintain exactly the same energy, productivity, routines and expectations we had in June.
No wonder something feels off.
I’ve spent a lot of my life assuming that when something starts feeling uncomfortable, I need to fix it.
New planner. New routine. New goal. New project. New furniture arrangement.
Sometimes literally new furniture.
But the older I get, the more I wonder whether that restless feeling isn’t always a request for more.
Maybe it’s a request to pay attention.
Fall makes me want to come home
There is something about fall that turns my attention inward.
And I don’t just mean physically, although yes, give me all the blankets and the soup and the lamps instead of overhead lighting.
I mean inward toward my actual life.
What is working?
What isn’t?
What have I been tolerating?
What am I tired of carrying?
What sounded like a good idea six months ago but now makes me want to fake my own death to get out of it?
Fall seems to make those answers louder.
Maybe that’s because summer is distracting in the loveliest possible way.
There are places to go. Things to do. Gardens to tend. Patios to sit on. Trips to take. People to see. Alpacas to love on.
Then everything gets a little quieter.
And in that quiet, I can hear myself again.
Maybe I don’t need to change everything
This is the part I’m learning.
The old version of me would feel the shift and immediately turn it into a project. Because apparently I have never met an internal awakening I couldn’t turn into a fucking checklist.
If I wanted more peace, I’d develop a peace strategy.
If I wanted more creativity, I’d figure out how to monetize it.
If I wanted to walk more, eventually I’d probably start researching how to become a professional walker.
I am getting better at this.
Slowly.
These days, when I get the urge to change everything, I’m trying to ask a different question:
What is this season asking me to change?
Not my whole life.
Not my identity.
Not my career.
Not all seventeen things at once.
Just…what feels ready?
Maybe the answer is my schedule.
Maybe it’s a commitment I’ve outgrown.
Maybe it’s the way I’m spending my mornings.
Maybe it’s where my attention has been going.
Maybe it’s literally the couch.
The couch is allowed to move without it becoming a metaphor.
Although, knowing me, it probably will.
I’m also learning that I can romanticize fall without turning it into another reinvention project.
We are seasonal, too
I’ve spent years trying to create routines I can follow forever. I don’t think I believe in them anymore.
I don’t eat the same things in January that I want in July.
I don’t have the same energy in February that I have in June.
I don’t crave the same amount of socializing in November that I do in August.
My creativity changes.
My sleep changes.
My appetite changes.
My attention changes.
I change.
And maybe the goal isn’t to create a life that stays perfectly consistent despite all of that.
Maybe the goal is to create a life flexible enough to change with me.
That’s what I’m starting to think seasonal living actually is.
Not decorating the front porch with pumpkins.
Not buying a new fall wardrobe.
Not having the correct candle.
Although I support all three.
It’s paying attention to the rhythm you’re actually in instead of constantly trying to force yourself back into another one.
Fall isn’t asking me to become someone new
That’s probably the biggest shift for me.
For most of my adult life, change has meant reinvention.
If something didn’t feel right, I assumed I needed a new version of myself.
More disciplined.
More productive.
More successful.
More organized.
More something.
But fall doesn’t reinvent itself.
It transitions.
And there is a difference.
One requires me to decide the person I am right now isn’t enough.
The other simply asks me to notice that something has run its course.
That feels especially important in midlife.
Because I’m not particularly interested in spending the next twenty years perpetually becoming a newer, shinier version of myself.
I’d rather get really fucking good at listening to the one who’s already here.
So yes.
I’ll probably rearrange the furniture.
I’ll clean out a closet.
I’ll buy the notebook because I’m a paper junkie.
I’ll make the soup.
I’m starting to think of all of this as living with the seasons: paying attention to the energy, rhythms and needs that change throughout the year instead of expecting myself to stay exactly the same.
Sometimes it’s simply October.
And maybe that’s reason enough.
