Oops, I did it again

On not acquiescing to or honouring my own expectations

Over the last week, three people have messaged to say something along the lines of “You’re quiet. You okay?”

I am grateful and consider myself very lucky to have people in my life who notice and check-in with me.

I’m fine, I promise. I’m just doing what I always do at this time of year, which is to hibernate on all fronts. I don’t know if it was a holiday in the Sun at the start of October or an influx of creative ideas that made me think I’d escaped it this year, but no - the thing that always happens is happening.

Photo by Erik Witsoe on Unsplash

My social outings are fewer. If I want anything doing, I know that I need to tackle it before the daylight hours start to dwindle. If the mantra for Summer is ‘we outside!’, from around the the end of September until the end of February I am firmly inside.

During a journalling session I hosted for Autumn Equinox, I included a prompt called Equinox Expectations. It asked that we acknowledge our cyclical personal patterns to set the scene for seasonal transition. And then to use those expectations to help make life more easeful.

It asks what we know of ourselves and to use that to work with ourselves.

What remains true perpetually or is true for you every autumn?

Sasha, you will hibernate. You will disappear. It may not be at the exact same time each year, but sometime between the end of September and the clocks going back an hour, you will experience a huge energy slump that feels thick and undeniable, but also genuinely confusing in the way that it wasn’t there and then it just all of a sudden is - prominent and pronounced.

But while honouring my own seasonal expectations, there’s also been an acknowledgement that I need to manage the expectations of my people, to just let them know that I’ve not fallen off the face of the earth, this is just my way at this time of the year.

You could ask this question of yourself at any time of the year that has significance for or a significant impact on you.

• I know that I am not a doer in January. I need much of the first two months of the year to acclimatise and defrost.

• I know that I like to disappear from the internet for much of August and have regular half-terms from social media.

• I know that my slower pace and processing mean that a fortnightly routine works for me over a weekly routine.

So yeah, maybe don’t be like me and Britney Spears the things that are always true for you. If you’d like to journal or mull over any of these thoughts, below are two prompts taken from the workshop along with one that’s come from my own IRL and of-the-moment learning:

Exploring your Cyclical Personal Patterns: What are your seasonal expectations for where you are in the year right now?

How can you use them to make life and your expectations of yourself more practicable?

While you acknowledge these things in yourself, is there anyone else you need to communicate some aspect of them with?

If you like considering these, you might like to join Embers an end-of-year journalling gathering I’m hosting via Zoom on Sunday 19th November at 5.30pm GMT.

The session is open to those who have taken a paid subscription.

To gain access to this session alone, you can join for this month and cancel right after. Remember, these are invitations that are yours for the taking - always if and when you choose.

Embers.

SeptEMBER. NovEMBER. DecEMBER.

I liken the end of the year to the embers of a fire: slow endings, smouldering remains, glowing hot coals. Though endings are in sight for a calendar year, that doesn’t mean that slates are wiped clean or chapters are closed and tied up with tidy bows. Let’s pause to consider some of the happenings of your year: what is here, what has been, what might continue. Make no mistake, embers don’t always mean endings.