We all know there are different seasons of each year - Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn. I know I have seen my share of the seasons roll from one to another. My favorite season is coming up next - Autumn. I love the color in the trees, the smell in the air. I love the smell of campfires and picking apples when the weather is crisp. I love warm apple cider with cinnamon and wearing my favorite fuzzy clothing.
🍂🍃🍁🍁🍃🍂
A lot of people seem to like “pumpkin spice season.” I’m not a particular pumpkin spice person, but I appreciate that many people love it. I think one of my sons told me that Starbucks wanted their pumpkin spice coffee to taste like a pumpkin pie that a person can drink - it’s a comfort taste, in America - pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving when you’re surrounded by the people you love the most - everyone eating and hopefully getting along, watching football, taking a nap on the couch while kids make a game of trying to put M&M’s in your open mouth. Anyone else? Just my house? Okay. 😉
A few weeks ago, I sent a survey out to my readers. I mentioned that when I went to 2 newsletters per week, my readership went down. I have pages and pages of newsletter titles I want to write. So I thought I should write 2 per week and get these “out there.”
I got a reply from someone saying they’d been busy and they gave me a sincere apology for the fact that they haven’t been reading, and I got another reply saying she would like 1 newsletter per week to read on those days when she works late. The image she painted for me was lovely - a time of quiet when the office is nearly empty, and reading my newsletter as a break for a busy work-week.
I have kept her image in my head for a few weeks to see where my own thoughts might take me.
These last few weeks, since coming home from my trip to the east coast of the USA & Canada, and then heading back out to Alaska - America’s final frontier - I have battled extreme exhaustion. I’ve been spending about 13 hours in bed per day, and fighting anhedonia. Fighting the fact that I live in a landlocked place now - Kansas. Of all the places I have ever wanted to live in life, somewhere that is landlocked is definitely not it.
🍂🍃🍁🍁🍃🍂
I spent many years in a late autumn state, during the last years of my marriage. I was depressed and I felt stuck and reviled. I didn’t want to be there and it was clear he didn’t want me there, either. I was an appliance - someone to clean the house and laugh at his jokes. That’s all I was useful for. It was a painful existence.
❄️🧤🧣☃️🥶🛷
It took me a bit of time to drum up the realization inside me that I would rather be homeless than stay with this person another day, so I initiated the process of divorce. During the whole divorce process, I had to hole up in my home and wait for instructions from my lawyer. It was definitely a long Winter for me - 4 years of Winter season in my life.
The divorce took 4 years of hell to get through. Anyone who has been through a divorce knows the ripping apart of your heart, the family, the home and the finances, and everything that has been entwined for, in my case, 20 years. It’s a painful, traumatic process. A divorce is trauma.
For me, it was one level of hell after another, because Covid hit in the middle, so he was home all day, every day, making all the noises and sounds he knows I can’t stand, just to irritate me and make me cry ugly tears, alone in my room. It is horrifying to see someone that you thought you knew, turn into someone else entirely, and realize that you never actually knew this person at all - that they don’t even know themselves. My sons even said to me, “Dad has turned into a completely different person.” Yeah. He no longer had his trash can - me - so he was bottling everything up again and pretending to be a happy-go-lucky person. And only I could see how exactly everything was designed to hurt me the most while making him look completely innocent. He is a master of mental manipulation - a skill he has honed since his high school years working at a magic shop in Washington, DC.
Have I digressed again? I guess I have. My brain goes down these rabbit holes & I just write & hope that something legible comes out that speaks to at least some of my readers.
🌸🌺🌼🌿🌹🌸
With the divorce over, I have been seeking my Spring now, for 2 years. I want to see my own version of apple blossoms starting to peek out. I want to see vivid yellow forsythia blooming in surprising places. I want to see crocuses and irises and daffodils begin to bloom. I have been looking for Spring to appear in my life.
Maybe my Spring was last year, when I started playing violin again and joined a few different orchestras. I played with the Delano Chamber Orchestra, then I played with the Friends University Orchestra, then I played with the South Central Orchestra. Maybe those were my beautiful trees blooming.
☀️🌻🍉🩱⛱️🕶️
This year, maybe it was my Summer, when I traveled like I have never traveled before - heading East, then North up to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Then back home to Kansas, then West then North, up to Alaska. Tomorrow I leave again, to head west, again, to San Diego. I looked on a map yesterday and found out it’s only 30 minutes to Mexico from there. I’ve never been to Mexico.
Maybe these are my summer days - the traveling.
With depression, anhedonia, anxiety, Compound PTSD, and ADHD, the voices in my head are exceedingly critical. Why am I so critical in my head all the time? I think it’s because of circumstances surrounding my ADHD brain growing up.
According to this website, “Researchers have estimated that, by the age of 10, kids with ADHD receive 20,000 more negative messages and critiques than their peers without ADHD. 20,000 more negative comments. Over the course of 10 years, that’s more than 5 negative comments PER DAY MORE than their peers.”
There is a (fun) video that flips the script - it shows a woman with ADHD correcting (her husband) on how to do things the way someone with ADHD would do it, and not the way a neurotypical person would do it. The folks who make this video are on YouTube, FaceBook and Instagram as ADHD_Love.
[Okay - I have been searching for that video I saw a few days ago and I can’t find it anywhere. So I will put it in the comments when I find it again. I hope I find it again.]
Editing to add the video!
Now, thanks to falling down that rabbit hole of looking for the video - I have gone and lost my entire train of thought.
🍂🍃🍁🍁🍃🍂
Well, I came back from my trips and asked for feedback. And I have been struggling, with my ADHD chronic overwhelm and also needing rest from burnout, to get newsletters written. I look at my list of things I want to write about, and wish I had written those when the inspiration struck. (More criticism in my head, do you see it?)
I don’t want to write just to get words out & send things. I want to write quality content that people actually want to read.
And, because the train of thought of “how to get from there to here” is gone, I will just say the last bit -
I am thinking for now, I am going to write 1 newsletter per week. I am not sure which day I will send it out on. Probably / hopefully Wednesday to keep some consistency with what I have been doing - and if I have another one I want to send out that week, consider it a bonus.
And that’s what I will be doing for now.
I am not sure if this is my Autumn or Winter. Somehow, honestly, it feels like a Winter for me. Taking rest because I need rest from all the traveling and new thoughts in my head, tornado - spinning around.
What season of life are you in?
I found the video !!
https://youtu.be/jbWYTr4XGqc?si=FP8qNXFu3RY9tGNK
I can relate to much of this especially the ADHD aspects. The rabbit hole. I have to laugh at myself sometimes. Get some rest and take care of you