a not-unpleasant melancholy

I'm dealing with a bout of fall melancholy.

Nothing's seriously wrong, it's just that I feel a little sadder and more tired than normal. 

Fall is heavy in New England: it got dark and cold at night faster than I was expecting. 

Changing cars moved my cheese. I have a LOT of firewood to toss down the stairs and then stack, and when you're constantly digging out splinters, your hands stay sore. 

In about three weeks, I will have a ton of apples to process. It will be night after night of the house being steam-fogged and sticky. My social circle is changing and I'm not sure I'm okay with it? I'll have to be. It's time for mousetraps again. I don't like doing that. I don't like the squirrels living in my attic bowling acorns and doing the Charleston at 3 am. I'm worried about this winter because the last one was really hard. Now they're telling me there's going to be a hurricane! We're out of bourbon. AGAIN. I really need to be more friendly or else no one will talk to me. I'm so tired I don't want to talk to anyone. Ever. I miss playing piano, but I'm scared to bring a piano home because I don't think it'll make it down the basement steps. The house is clean! That's nice. We should have people over. But I don't want to see anyone.

And it's fall and everyone's putting on cute sweaters and going to pick apples, or chopping a piece or two of firewood to heat enough water to make a french press of coffee with. 

When you have to deal with hundreds of pounds of apples, or else know they're going to waste....

When you have to deal with the firewood now or else spend your winter nights chipping frozen logs out of ice... there's very little room to be cute about it! Are all these people independently wealthy that they can just sit around "doing community" and posting lifestyle pictures? Is their life really such an endless Kinfolk picnic? GOSH! 

I'm not feeling sorry for myself (not much, at least), I'm just leaning into it. Sad and tired, yes, but well-soundtracked. Grab a beer. Tackle whatever your beast is. The sad music will help. And then (and I'm trying to take my own advice here) call a friend. Get out of the house. You probably earned it.