Melancholy

Autumn is melancholy at best.

All the bad things happen in the fall.

As the days grow shorter, the evenings grow colder and the leaves grow brighter, I want nothing more than to turn inward and away from the rest of the world.

I've been feeling tired lately.  Run down.  Worn out like the dead leaves that swirl around me when I walk outside. They have held on to their green freshness and vitality as long as possible, but now they've give up the fight and they've turned brown, crinkled with age.  They're worn out.  

So am I.

Nearly all of the things that have caused me to feel so worn out are things that I put upon myself.    No one else cares, or notices, if my floors are mopped, if my laundry is caught up, if I run 10 miles or 20 miles a week, if I write something every day.  But still I pile things onto my to-do list until I could not possibly be able to fit it all into a single day.  

Then I feel like a failure for not getting it all done. 

The holidays are right upon me and I feel that like a weight on my shoulders, too.  I haven't crafted, sewn or otherwise "handmade with love" one single gift, which by my estimation, puts me about two months behind.  I had made two quilts by this time last year.  All it really means is that everyone I love will get a gift card this year.  Although they won't notice the difference, I will.  It just feels like something else I can't seem to accomplish.

I have felt this way every fall that I can remember - out of sorts, disjointed, behind.  I'm like a bear who has worked hard all year foraging and surviving and living, and now I just need to curl up somewhere warm and hibernate until spring.  

Because in the spring, when I see the first green on the trees and when my tulips start to poke through the dead leaves that have lain, untouched since fall, I will start to feel alive again.