It's the Fall

It's the fall & the unfallen apples hold their brightness a little longer into the blue air, holding the dream that they can be brighter.

The weather has definitely turned.  There is a chill in the air.  The skies are grey.  We may see an unseasonally warm day or two, but there is no mistake about the colder days and the longer nights.  We are heading into the fall.  Children are back to school.  The parks are deserted in the evenings.  There is homework and piano practice.  The pool is closed.


Fall can be beautiful.  If the days are bright and crisp.  If you have the right sweater.  If you go apple picking (which we did last Sunday) and hiking in the Gatineaus.  Apple picking turns into pumpkin picking, which turns into pies for Thanksgiving dinner.  Still a little colder and you can carve the pumpkins and put candles in them and leave them outside for Hallow'een.

Fall is beautiful. 

Except when it is just grey and cold.  And followed by winter.

Fall is the start of new things.  I will never forget the excitement I felt every fall starting school, especially university, arriving at the beautiful campus at Dalhousie University, some leaves already changing to red, yellow, and orange, the ivy clinging to the stone buildings, all the new students arriving, moving into the majestic Women's Residence. 

This fall, after many years, I will be starting something new.  A new job at Tax Policy.  Hardly a radical move, my Director told me when I said I was trying to experiment with my life a bit.  No, not radical.  If I could choose, I would quit my job and move to Paris to be a writer. 

Working at Tax Policy will not be like being a writer in Paris.  I think it will be a tough, hard slog.  My office will not have the beautiful, south-facing view I have now.  In fact, it won't have any window at all, though it will be bigger.  I will have to learn the Income Tax Act.  I will have a steep learning curve, and maybe it won't be as much fun as my current job.

But I've done my current job for so many years.  And learning Tax may not be as romantic as writing in Paris, but I think it will be a highlight of a career in public policy.  It will be doing in practice what I learned from those dusty public finance textbooks while sitting in my classrooms at Dalhousie.  This is what I studied for.  

It may not be the ideal time for me to go to Tax Policy.  When I am trying to recover.  When my concentration is low.  When I get more easily tired and distracted.  When they are just running an EX-01 competition in my current Division and there will in fact be openings.  Not the ideal time. 

But this is when the opportunity came - they had already waited for me a long time - so I couldn't say no.  And in other ways, it is a good time for me to start something new.  A new beginning.  Without the reminders of what was happening to me in January when I look at old e-mails to refresh my memory on files.

I've made my decision and I'm leaving. 

But before I do, a rough week lies ahead. My quarterly appointment with my specialist.  Physio for a shoulder injury.  (Really?)  Another ultrasound, which I don't know how I will get through because it was through an ultrasound that they found what they did last time.  I don't know how I will react to the test.  And how I will get through waiting for the results.  And how I will do this over and over again.  And how I will deal with the other aches and pains. 

Ativan?  No.  I've worked hard to get off of it.  And it hasn't been easy.  Trying to get through the insomnia and the intense bursts of anxiety.  I think - I hope - I've gotten through the worst of it and can't afford to go back to it.  I don't want to take it ever again and I hope I never have to.

I have to get through it without.

If I find myself drifting, I have to bring myself back to the present, to the unfallen apples that hold their brightness a little longer. 

Back to the fall.