This is the Sunday edition of Culture Study — the newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen, which you can read about here. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing. Sometime in the last few weeks, I realized that I was slipping. Or rather, that parts of my life that I thought I had kinda figured out — feeding myself lunch that isn’t just pretzels and hummus, dedicating actual time to hobbies, legitimately walling off parts of my life from work — felt like they were slipping. Like a lot of feelings, it manifested as a blob of amorphous unease. Everything was fine, but less so.
I just described myself to a friend this way: "You might want to take everything I say with not a grain but a whole sea of salt because it is Fall, which is, for me, the slow descent into a bleak winter. It's my hard season." I feel like my skin is see-through, and everything gets under it because I am that sensitive. And yes, I am wearing a sweater, and it's nice to wear a sweater and mostly athleisure, but I know that the line is so thin between this luxurious laziness and feeling like I just give up on everything. Because even the daylight is giving up. Also, I'm not sure if anyone else feels this way, but it seems even harder because I KNOW this season is coming. It happens every year, and yet, I am ALWAYS surprised by how it affects me. The surprise is a real one-two punch.
I'm a teacher and at our school's start up days, my principal did a half day session on teacher resilience and burnout. She told us that October is the number one month for teacher burnout and for teachers to leave the profession. We were all shocked but... now that we are in it, I can't see anything but the truth of that fact. As a kindergarten teacher, I am very accustomed to the insanity between the start of the year and Halloween when teaching 5 & 6 year olds how to "do school." I cannot count how many times I have told myself and others "just give it until Halloween, it gets better!" This is my 10th year and 3rd at this school with my current team, I consider myself to be highly skilled in my profession, I have an extremely supportive administrator, I'm provided with easy to use and highly effective curriculum... and I'm still barely keeping my nose above water. I see that the "just get kids back in the building" promises have both born fruit (my current students have now had more in person days than my last year kids had all year) but also where it has fallen short (so many missed preschool and the accompanying opportunities, parent anxieties are at an all time high, don't get me started on Covid protocols and reactions to my state's teacher vaccine mandate). As my self-prescribed Halloween deadline approaches, I can't help but wonder what lies ahead in winter.
This is so funny to me (by that I mean 'strange', not 'haha'), because October is reliably when I finally start feeling good/better every year, regardless of how anything outside of myself might be going. I HATE summer, I hate hot (or even warm) weather, I hate everyone else being so damn cheerful about the horrible summer weather all the time, I hate too much direct sunshine or too much sunshine at all in a day, I'm pretty take it or leave it about being outside in general, but I am firmly against it when it's too hot/sunny/buggy/muggy out. So once it is dark in the mornings again, and cool enough for sweaters and scarves and coats (coats!) again, and even when we get our fall-back hour (look, I think the time change is bullshit in these current times and we should stop it entirely, but if we have to have it, I love the falling-back part a lot). I have said for years that I think I have reverse SAD, if there is such a thing (and if there isn't, maybe there should be?). When it's cool enough to have the oven on, I am better about cooking and baking regularly (summer is when my meals get sad and crackers-and-hummus-y), when it's cold enough to be wearing layers/a coat, I want to be outside taking walks again, when it's dark in the morning I don't mind being up somehow (or, not as much). Clearly I just need some of your mental summer energy and you need to take some of my October vibes, and we can balance out a bit?
I feel as though I walk a line that has become increasingly thinner over the past 18 months, and this fall I am skating over it on the tips of my toes, waiting to fall into...something. Life has never felt so heavy, so labored, so fucking tiring. There is a sense -- several others have said this more eloquently -- of a precipice of radical change coming. I hope it is good for me, everyone here, and the world/planet at large.
Sorry to be a downer. Hats off to those who can handle fall and life! Come eat ice cream sandwiches and watch Buffy with me, and tell me how you do it.
I burst into tears at the paragraph describing community: "Community...means giving a shit, and acting when called upon and even before. It means listening to each other in generous ways." I felt so seen by this. I'm trying so hard to do this. I hold elected office in a very small, rural town that I grew up in, and trying to make decisions during/related to the pandemic has been so bruising to my sense of community. We are so divided in regards to COVID, in every way, and I hear from people I know, who I see at school pick-up, in the post office, grocery store, who tell me and write me about how passionately they feel against/for covid policies. I feel cracked open trying to listen and live in this division and do it with compassion and continue to make decisions big and small and still give a shit about my community and not cave in on myself. I feel so lonely and confused about my community and whether it's really a good place for me to be, and I've never felt that way before. I've lost count of how many times this year I've said "I wish I could feel less".
Not even finished reading this and already had to pause to say THANK YOU for writing it! This past week or two has felt just like this for me (a lot of “what is the point of my labor? What am I doing with my life and energy?” ennui). A yoga instructor told me on Friday that people had been telling him all week that they were tired, that it has been a long week. I wondered…how could that be? But also I agreed: me too. It’s easy to forget the power of the calendar on our minds and bodies.
Thank you for this. This past week in particular has felt like one giant, slow-moving panic attack. No room to breathe, for no specific reason. But this is a familiar feeling in my life, and while I’ve never made the seasonal connection it has at times served as an indicator that some enormous growth or radical change is underway, that I simply cannot abide the status quo for a moment longer, that something’s got to give. Which certainly feels true on both personal and planetary levels…
I keep one of those Five Year Diaries where there's a page for each date with five entries to make a note on, say, Oct 18 for five years in a row, and it has been really helpful for me when I get in these modes, as I can look back on those times when things were super stressful and now see hat it smoothed over in the end and I'm okay now. I try to ground myself in that knowledge as I go through Stress Journeys.
Fun fact: I’ve been deeply suspicious of autumn for about 5 years now, as the late August - September border always seems to be when an Unforeseen Disaster hits, and I spend the next calendar year recovering from the fallout. Consequently, October is either blocked out completely or really rough. This year, I’m pinging back and forth between ennui and a deep desire for a future that looks like *anything* but the present.
“That’s the feeling of regression, I think. It’s not that we’re losing ground. It’s that we were too hopeful about having gained it.”
After the past 18 months, I cannot shake the feeling that it is foolish to have hope. Which isn’t the healthiest way to look at the world. But I am so, so tired of wanting things and having them be undercut by disappointment; I’ve started to dull the urge to want, or even expect that things will go well, so that when they inevitably fall through it hurts less.
Different people have different seasons. I'm an autumn person and live with an autumn person, so this is our favorite time of the year. Summers, even in the Pacific Northwest, are demanding with their warmth and incessant light. We usually collapse some time in August and start our recovery in September. Autumn means less light, cooler weather, wonderful rain and the American harvest celebration round starting with Halloween and ending with Martin Luther King Day. Winter is our time to hibernate, stay home, enjoy the dark, eat rich food and plan. Spring has a lot to offer too with new growth. Then comes summer again, and we burn our momentum from spring until our late summer crash.
How much of disliking autumn is about being a teacher or academic? Parents too might dislike the dislocation of the autumn too since children are on the academic calendar as well.
Just like others in this thread, I, too, am a "fall person" and, for the most part, this September/October has been delicious: cooler weather, feeling comfortable in my favourite clothes again, etc. But the not-so-delicious parts have been especially bitter. (Also: how are we more than halfway finished with this month already? HOW?)
I've found I have to stop listening to the radio during my office hours because the onslaught of awful news has gotten so heavy, feeling my own exhaustion and also that of others around me has just gotten to be so much and while I'm part of several lovely communities that I am so, so grateful for, there's the undercurrent that all of us are working jobs that don't respect us or pay us what we need, that we're all exhausted by local/provincial/state/federal government games, we're looking for or floundering in love, that we're trying our best to not fall into depression or states of anxiety but they're humming below the surface.
I would love to just flow with what the season is bringing (calmness, slowness, restfulness), but that seems so far out of reach and unattainable with ~everything.
How do you even find community when the very thought of going out to meet new people sends your partner into massive panic attack, as he believes there is no acceptable risk in being with people, and I’ve not been able to maintain a social life for 18 months? The reaction I get if I want to do any thing outside the home almost makes it not worth it.
like many others on this thread, i'm definitely a fall person in that i'm so relieved that the heat of summer is over, and also, as a grad student, i find summer to be really stressful because of the lack of routine/external school structure, so i'm thrilled to be back to that, but yeah, this year october has sucked majorly lol. pandemic fatigue is WILD. it hasn't helped that for the past week i've had the first major cold i've had since march 2020, probably acquired because of all the extra socializing i've been doing now that school is in-person again. a little surprised that nobody else has mentioned the mercury retrograde which just ended (i know, i know) but if the calendar and the seasons have effects on our bodies and minds, then why not the stars? anyway i'm hopeful for everyone else struggling in this time that we'll be able to break out of the worst of it soon. sending love and light to you all, my little internet pals.
This is so timely! This year I've been more aware of how difficult the change of seasons have felt both for me and my clients. As a life and career coach, I get a behind the scenes look into many people's lives and see a lot of similar patterns to what you and others here are describing. The seasonal change is hard. The pandemic is hard. And so is -- if you're from a country with a whole back to school energy in September -- that surge of energy and optimism at this time of year, where you take a bunch of new things on, and then realize in October, that you actually don't have the capacity to do all that you hoped. I'm a mama too -- so I totally recognize the hope that school will make the parenting and work juggle easier, but it doesn't, because October is the time when kiddos start getting sick! The last two weeks, I've feel like I've been having to set boundaries and have difficult conversations in every part of my life and I'm just like what.is.happening ... but I think it's also related to what you're saying about needing to be in community. This year, as opposed to last time this year, we are with other people more, in community, and we're having to adjust to that. And we're all navigating post-social distancing weirdness as best as we can, and all feeling tapped out, and it just makes for a very trying social soup! Words of advice that have been helping me lately, is to give extra grace to yourself, and also extra grace for others, as we all try to navigate these times.
At the beginning of the month I felt like I had things figured out. Friday at 12pm I was crying because suddenly everything was terrible. There is a frantic edge to everything in my mind right now and I’m not sure how to handle them.
Last night I went to a bonfire on a puget sound beach with my coworkers who are friends, and sharing food in the dark and the wind by the fire felt like the best thing for my brain. And today I’m back to anxiety and wanting to crawl back into bed. October sucks.
I guess I'm the opposite of most people: I really don't like summer, and I love fall. I hate hot weather. I love living in Minnesota except for the heat and humidity, which used to be more tolerable until climate change really got going. This year we had drought and over a hundred days of high 80s-90s weather with ridiculous humidity. I never wanted to be outside. It was awful. Now it's October, and I LOVE October! The air smells good, the days aren't so damn hot (most of the time—we had some summer earlier this month unfortunately), the colors are lovely (even with the drought). But yes, this ongoing pandemic takes a lot of the pleasure away. And in fact what made the summer worse this year for me was the tiny, tiny window of being vaccinated and having a chance to see my vaccinated friends inside without masks, etc., and without fear—and that went away in a matter of weeks. Then I couldn't safely see them inside, and it was too freaking hot to be outside. So I got really sad because I had no social interactions in person for months again, just like earlier in the pandemic. Right now I can at least be outside and see my friends. Of course, it will get cold soon, and that will make it harder for other people. I will want to be outside longer than most people can stand it. Back to being a weirdo again.
I just described myself to a friend this way: "You might want to take everything I say with not a grain but a whole sea of salt because it is Fall, which is, for me, the slow descent into a bleak winter. It's my hard season." I feel like my skin is see-through, and everything gets under it because I am that sensitive. And yes, I am wearing a sweater, and it's nice to wear a sweater and mostly athleisure, but I know that the line is so thin between this luxurious laziness and feeling like I just give up on everything. Because even the daylight is giving up. Also, I'm not sure if anyone else feels this way, but it seems even harder because I KNOW this season is coming. It happens every year, and yet, I am ALWAYS surprised by how it affects me. The surprise is a real one-two punch.
I'm a teacher and at our school's start up days, my principal did a half day session on teacher resilience and burnout. She told us that October is the number one month for teacher burnout and for teachers to leave the profession. We were all shocked but... now that we are in it, I can't see anything but the truth of that fact. As a kindergarten teacher, I am very accustomed to the insanity between the start of the year and Halloween when teaching 5 & 6 year olds how to "do school." I cannot count how many times I have told myself and others "just give it until Halloween, it gets better!" This is my 10th year and 3rd at this school with my current team, I consider myself to be highly skilled in my profession, I have an extremely supportive administrator, I'm provided with easy to use and highly effective curriculum... and I'm still barely keeping my nose above water. I see that the "just get kids back in the building" promises have both born fruit (my current students have now had more in person days than my last year kids had all year) but also where it has fallen short (so many missed preschool and the accompanying opportunities, parent anxieties are at an all time high, don't get me started on Covid protocols and reactions to my state's teacher vaccine mandate). As my self-prescribed Halloween deadline approaches, I can't help but wonder what lies ahead in winter.
This is so funny to me (by that I mean 'strange', not 'haha'), because October is reliably when I finally start feeling good/better every year, regardless of how anything outside of myself might be going. I HATE summer, I hate hot (or even warm) weather, I hate everyone else being so damn cheerful about the horrible summer weather all the time, I hate too much direct sunshine or too much sunshine at all in a day, I'm pretty take it or leave it about being outside in general, but I am firmly against it when it's too hot/sunny/buggy/muggy out. So once it is dark in the mornings again, and cool enough for sweaters and scarves and coats (coats!) again, and even when we get our fall-back hour (look, I think the time change is bullshit in these current times and we should stop it entirely, but if we have to have it, I love the falling-back part a lot). I have said for years that I think I have reverse SAD, if there is such a thing (and if there isn't, maybe there should be?). When it's cool enough to have the oven on, I am better about cooking and baking regularly (summer is when my meals get sad and crackers-and-hummus-y), when it's cold enough to be wearing layers/a coat, I want to be outside taking walks again, when it's dark in the morning I don't mind being up somehow (or, not as much). Clearly I just need some of your mental summer energy and you need to take some of my October vibes, and we can balance out a bit?
I feel as though I walk a line that has become increasingly thinner over the past 18 months, and this fall I am skating over it on the tips of my toes, waiting to fall into...something. Life has never felt so heavy, so labored, so fucking tiring. There is a sense -- several others have said this more eloquently -- of a precipice of radical change coming. I hope it is good for me, everyone here, and the world/planet at large.
Sorry to be a downer. Hats off to those who can handle fall and life! Come eat ice cream sandwiches and watch Buffy with me, and tell me how you do it.
I burst into tears at the paragraph describing community: "Community...means giving a shit, and acting when called upon and even before. It means listening to each other in generous ways." I felt so seen by this. I'm trying so hard to do this. I hold elected office in a very small, rural town that I grew up in, and trying to make decisions during/related to the pandemic has been so bruising to my sense of community. We are so divided in regards to COVID, in every way, and I hear from people I know, who I see at school pick-up, in the post office, grocery store, who tell me and write me about how passionately they feel against/for covid policies. I feel cracked open trying to listen and live in this division and do it with compassion and continue to make decisions big and small and still give a shit about my community and not cave in on myself. I feel so lonely and confused about my community and whether it's really a good place for me to be, and I've never felt that way before. I've lost count of how many times this year I've said "I wish I could feel less".
Not even finished reading this and already had to pause to say THANK YOU for writing it! This past week or two has felt just like this for me (a lot of “what is the point of my labor? What am I doing with my life and energy?” ennui). A yoga instructor told me on Friday that people had been telling him all week that they were tired, that it has been a long week. I wondered…how could that be? But also I agreed: me too. It’s easy to forget the power of the calendar on our minds and bodies.
Thank you for this. This past week in particular has felt like one giant, slow-moving panic attack. No room to breathe, for no specific reason. But this is a familiar feeling in my life, and while I’ve never made the seasonal connection it has at times served as an indicator that some enormous growth or radical change is underway, that I simply cannot abide the status quo for a moment longer, that something’s got to give. Which certainly feels true on both personal and planetary levels…
I keep one of those Five Year Diaries where there's a page for each date with five entries to make a note on, say, Oct 18 for five years in a row, and it has been really helpful for me when I get in these modes, as I can look back on those times when things were super stressful and now see hat it smoothed over in the end and I'm okay now. I try to ground myself in that knowledge as I go through Stress Journeys.
Fun fact: I’ve been deeply suspicious of autumn for about 5 years now, as the late August - September border always seems to be when an Unforeseen Disaster hits, and I spend the next calendar year recovering from the fallout. Consequently, October is either blocked out completely or really rough. This year, I’m pinging back and forth between ennui and a deep desire for a future that looks like *anything* but the present.
“That’s the feeling of regression, I think. It’s not that we’re losing ground. It’s that we were too hopeful about having gained it.”
After the past 18 months, I cannot shake the feeling that it is foolish to have hope. Which isn’t the healthiest way to look at the world. But I am so, so tired of wanting things and having them be undercut by disappointment; I’ve started to dull the urge to want, or even expect that things will go well, so that when they inevitably fall through it hurts less.
Different people have different seasons. I'm an autumn person and live with an autumn person, so this is our favorite time of the year. Summers, even in the Pacific Northwest, are demanding with their warmth and incessant light. We usually collapse some time in August and start our recovery in September. Autumn means less light, cooler weather, wonderful rain and the American harvest celebration round starting with Halloween and ending with Martin Luther King Day. Winter is our time to hibernate, stay home, enjoy the dark, eat rich food and plan. Spring has a lot to offer too with new growth. Then comes summer again, and we burn our momentum from spring until our late summer crash.
How much of disliking autumn is about being a teacher or academic? Parents too might dislike the dislocation of the autumn too since children are on the academic calendar as well.
Just like others in this thread, I, too, am a "fall person" and, for the most part, this September/October has been delicious: cooler weather, feeling comfortable in my favourite clothes again, etc. But the not-so-delicious parts have been especially bitter. (Also: how are we more than halfway finished with this month already? HOW?)
I've found I have to stop listening to the radio during my office hours because the onslaught of awful news has gotten so heavy, feeling my own exhaustion and also that of others around me has just gotten to be so much and while I'm part of several lovely communities that I am so, so grateful for, there's the undercurrent that all of us are working jobs that don't respect us or pay us what we need, that we're all exhausted by local/provincial/state/federal government games, we're looking for or floundering in love, that we're trying our best to not fall into depression or states of anxiety but they're humming below the surface.
I would love to just flow with what the season is bringing (calmness, slowness, restfulness), but that seems so far out of reach and unattainable with ~everything.
How do you even find community when the very thought of going out to meet new people sends your partner into massive panic attack, as he believes there is no acceptable risk in being with people, and I’ve not been able to maintain a social life for 18 months? The reaction I get if I want to do any thing outside the home almost makes it not worth it.
like many others on this thread, i'm definitely a fall person in that i'm so relieved that the heat of summer is over, and also, as a grad student, i find summer to be really stressful because of the lack of routine/external school structure, so i'm thrilled to be back to that, but yeah, this year october has sucked majorly lol. pandemic fatigue is WILD. it hasn't helped that for the past week i've had the first major cold i've had since march 2020, probably acquired because of all the extra socializing i've been doing now that school is in-person again. a little surprised that nobody else has mentioned the mercury retrograde which just ended (i know, i know) but if the calendar and the seasons have effects on our bodies and minds, then why not the stars? anyway i'm hopeful for everyone else struggling in this time that we'll be able to break out of the worst of it soon. sending love and light to you all, my little internet pals.
This is so timely! This year I've been more aware of how difficult the change of seasons have felt both for me and my clients. As a life and career coach, I get a behind the scenes look into many people's lives and see a lot of similar patterns to what you and others here are describing. The seasonal change is hard. The pandemic is hard. And so is -- if you're from a country with a whole back to school energy in September -- that surge of energy and optimism at this time of year, where you take a bunch of new things on, and then realize in October, that you actually don't have the capacity to do all that you hoped. I'm a mama too -- so I totally recognize the hope that school will make the parenting and work juggle easier, but it doesn't, because October is the time when kiddos start getting sick! The last two weeks, I've feel like I've been having to set boundaries and have difficult conversations in every part of my life and I'm just like what.is.happening ... but I think it's also related to what you're saying about needing to be in community. This year, as opposed to last time this year, we are with other people more, in community, and we're having to adjust to that. And we're all navigating post-social distancing weirdness as best as we can, and all feeling tapped out, and it just makes for a very trying social soup! Words of advice that have been helping me lately, is to give extra grace to yourself, and also extra grace for others, as we all try to navigate these times.
At the beginning of the month I felt like I had things figured out. Friday at 12pm I was crying because suddenly everything was terrible. There is a frantic edge to everything in my mind right now and I’m not sure how to handle them.
Last night I went to a bonfire on a puget sound beach with my coworkers who are friends, and sharing food in the dark and the wind by the fire felt like the best thing for my brain. And today I’m back to anxiety and wanting to crawl back into bed. October sucks.
I guess I'm the opposite of most people: I really don't like summer, and I love fall. I hate hot weather. I love living in Minnesota except for the heat and humidity, which used to be more tolerable until climate change really got going. This year we had drought and over a hundred days of high 80s-90s weather with ridiculous humidity. I never wanted to be outside. It was awful. Now it's October, and I LOVE October! The air smells good, the days aren't so damn hot (most of the time—we had some summer earlier this month unfortunately), the colors are lovely (even with the drought). But yes, this ongoing pandemic takes a lot of the pleasure away. And in fact what made the summer worse this year for me was the tiny, tiny window of being vaccinated and having a chance to see my vaccinated friends inside without masks, etc., and without fear—and that went away in a matter of weeks. Then I couldn't safely see them inside, and it was too freaking hot to be outside. So I got really sad because I had no social interactions in person for months again, just like earlier in the pandemic. Right now I can at least be outside and see my friends. Of course, it will get cold soon, and that will make it harder for other people. I will want to be outside longer than most people can stand it. Back to being a weirdo again.