Releasing the Notes

Autumn is upon us. I love autumn, with the changing in the leaves and cooler weather. I love putting on a beanie and a hoodie and crunching through the wayward dry leaves that have found themselves in the gutter. I love the ciders and the pumpkin spices.

I hear that is called being basic.

If enjoying the icons of a season is basic, sign me up.

There is a musician that I love, mostly because he takes songs I like and rewrites the music in the style of other musicians I love, and makes it new and nostalgic at the same time. The man is a wizard.

His name is Alex Melton.

A few years back he wrote an original song that has all the trappings to be a hit. Check it out:

I love it so much. I will listen to this song all autumn (as if I haven’t already been listening to it all summer as well). Autumn deserved a song like this.

Each fall, families gather in droves to go into the mountains around where I live to take family pictures among the changing leaves. The vibrant reds and yellows are so inviting and majestic, and it is hard not to admire them.

They remind us of the beauty in death.

Our lives are full of little deaths. The cycles of growth we go through require us to let parts of ourselves die in order to let the new growth in. That doesn’t always need to be a sad event, sometimes the parts of us that were once the most important have run their course, and they are ready to be put to rest.

I am particularly talented at holding onto things longer than I should. I worked in an industry that I wasn’t meant to be in for ten years, and for the last nine of those years I tried over and over to force the fit. I tried changing small things about the job, but inevitably found myself searching for a way out.

I am one of the trees that tries to hold onto the green as far into the fall as I can.

Trees don’t actually die during the fall and winter, they go into a dormant stage. They rest from all the growth they made during the spring and summer months, and they sink into themselves to weather the colder parts of the year.

They are not the only part of nature to rest through the winter. Most of the fall is filled with nature prepping for a long rest. Squirrels gather nuts and seeds, bears put on layers of fat to last them through the winter, and plants pull their energy out of growth and reassign it to creating fruit and seeds.

One thing I do miss about teaching is the lunch table conversations with some of my favorite people. My last year of teaching, we were talking about how nature checks out for the winter, and one of the guys at the table talked about how important it is for us as humans to rest as well.

So this autumn, I am giving myself permission to rest. I will spend more time reading, relaxing around a fire with a cup of apple cider or hot cocoa, and spending time with the people that help me recharge.

The self-care era.

Self-care is a buzzword that is thrown around a lot these days, but not very many people understand them. In 2020 the school district I was working for started pushing self-care excessively. We had meetings about self-care, we would get messages from the district office reminding us how important self-care was, and offered self-care workshops at conventions we had to attend.

There was a lot of talk about how important it was, but no talk about what it was. We all knew we needed to do it, but we didn’t know how to do it.

What is self-care?

A lot of us turned it into an excuse to do whatever we wanted. Eating more fast food, drinking more caffeine, going home early, and just generally indulging in any whim they came across. I did a good amount of this as well. It seemed like self-care to me, because I had no idea what it really was.

I’ve gotten better at it. I think it clicked when I started thinking about what it meant to care for myself. A good analogy is child-care. If we dropped of our kids at a child-care and they spent the whole day watching TV and eating dino-nuggies we would be pretty upset. We are paying for enrichment, right? Good child-care involves some learning, some healthy food options, and some time to play.

Another one, and one I relate to more, is tuning your instrument. I spent a few years teaching guitar lessons, and I would start every session off with tuning the guitars. Some students would do it before they came, and it would be fast. Others were really off, and we took the first five to ten minutes to tune. If we didn’t start in tune, we had no idea if we were getting better or not.

I was at a concert one time where the guitarist stopped the set and spent time to tune his guitar. He was very picky, and his tuning had to be perfect before he would play. It took a long time to get it perfect. When he finally had it, he stepped back up to the mic and I half expected to hear an apology about it; that is what I would have done. Instead, he said, “I tune because I care. I want the music to sound good for you, and it won’t if I’m out of tune.”

Self-care is the same.

Self-care is taking walks to get some fresh air and exercise. It is giving yourself time to take a shower and get clean. It is skipping the morning donut and choosing an apple instead. Self-care is drinking water, reading a book, learning a new skill, doing a hobby we really love, catching up with old friends, actually sleeping.

It used to be just a regular part of living. Somewhere between embracing the hustle culture and inflation we lost sight of actually caring for ourselves. We cut out these things we looked at as luxuries, and ended up shaving out the healthy habits that allow us to thrive.

I had the hardest time allowing myself to do these things, because they seemed selfish. If I went out exercising, I wouldn’t be spending time with my kids. If I took a night to play games with my friends, I was leaving my wife to put the kids to bed alone. So I turned to the unhealthy self-care options as a stress relief instead of actually taking care of myself. I was having anxiety attacks every night because I was over-stimulated, over-whelmed, and over-caffeinated. The time I was spending with my kids was not quality because I was so worn out and burnt out.

Taking the time for a run is healthy for you and for your family. The energy you will be able to pour into them when your own needs are met will be more than when you are ignoring your needs, and better quality as well.

Good experiences happen when you are in a good space.

So this fall, put on that scarf your mom knitted for you, zip up your jacket, and crunch some leaves. Read a book from your TBR pile. Find yourself.

Take care of you.