We’re approaching Samhain, the final harvest is drawing to a close, and the dark half of the year is preparing to settle in. The days are getting shorter, the nights are growing longer, and the natural world is beginning its annual process of withdrawing, conserving energy, and preparing for the quieter months ahead.
Meanwhile, I have seventeen things on my desk that needed to be finished yesterday.
I find this inconsiderate of the seasons.
Every autumn, I hear some variation of the same beautiful sentiment: this is the time to slow down, turn inward, release what no longer serves us, and honor the wisdom of rest. The trees are letting go of their leaves. The earth is preparing to sleep. The animals are making their seasonal adjustments. Everything in nature seems to understand that there is a time for activity and a time for stillness.
Everything except the people who keep sending me emails.
I don’t disagree with the seasonal wisdom. After more than forty years of living and practicing within the rhythms of the Pagan year, I understand it quite well. I simply haven’t figured out how to convince my responsibilities that we’re entering the dark half of the year and they should kindly leave me alone until Imbolc.
I’ve considered putting up a sign.
The Wheel Turns, Whether We’re Ready or Not
One of the things I’ve always appreciated about the Wheel of the Year is that it doesn’t particularly care whether we’re prepared for it. The seasons don’t wait for us to finish our projects, organize our thoughts, or achieve some appropriately spiritual state of mind. Samhain arrives when it arrives. The daylight diminishes whether we’ve completed our autumn cleaning or not. The trees don’t hold a committee meeting to determine whether everyone is emotionally ready for November.
They just get on with it.
There’s something reassuring about that, although I occasionally wish the universe would demonstrate a little more flexibility with its scheduling.
As Pagans, we often talk about living in harmony with natural cycles, but we do so while inhabiting a society that operates according to an entirely different set of expectations. The natural world has seasons. Modern life has deadlines. The natural world responds to changing light, temperature, and available resources. Modern life responds to calendars, appointments, utility bills, and messages marked URGENT.
The two systems do not always cooperate.
And while we can certainly make adjustments to our routines, most of us cannot simply announce that the harvest is over and therefore we will no longer be answering the telephone.
I’ve considered that, too.
A Waxing Moon in a Waning Year
As we approach Samhain this year, the moon is waxing (Full on the 26th) while the seasonal light continues to diminish. I like that little contradiction. One cycle is gathering strength while another moves toward its period of greatest darkness.
Nature doesn’t operate according to one enormous, synchronized schedule. Different rhythms overlap. One thing begins while another ends. Something grows while something else retreats. A waxing moon doesn’t stop waxing because the trees are losing their leaves, and the trees don’t suddenly reverse course because the moon has decided to get bigger.
I find that comforting because my own life rarely follows a tidy seasonal pattern. There are things I want to finish, things I want to begin, and things I would dearly love to stop doing altogether. There are obligations that won’t disappear just because the daylight does, and there are projects that still excite me even when I’m exhausted.
Perhaps living in harmony with the seasons isn’t necessarily about matching their pace. Perhaps it’s about recognizing that the conditions have changed and responding accordingly.
Which brings me to what I’ve been doing for the past week.
I Have a Plan. Gods Help Us All.
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time recently taking a hard look at my workload, my responsibilities, and the various ways I distribute my energy. This wasn’t a particularly mystical undertaking. There were no dramatic revelations, no sudden messages from the Gods, and no ceremonial burning of a list of things I no longer wished to do.
There were, however, many spreadsheets, websites, schedules, and some rather pointed conversations with myself.
I went through my professional commitments and established boundaries around what I will and will not continue doing. I reviewed where my time goes, which activities genuinely deserve that investment, and which ones have been consuming energy without providing enough in return. I worked extensively on my websites, getting them polished, updated, and functioning as independently as possible so I won’t have to keep fussing with them every time I sit down at my computer.
I wanted the infrastructure of my working life to be in good enough shape that I could stop constantly tending it and concentrate on the work that actually matters.
This involved a surprising amount of work.
Apparently, preparing to do less requires doing quite a lot more first.
But I now have A Plan.
I am very pleased with A Plan. A Plan is sensible. A Plan has boundaries. A Plan has priorities and realistic expectations. A Plan understands that my time, energy, and resources are finite and that I cannot continue treating them as though they regenerate overnight through some mysterious magical process.
I hope A Plan works.
I have had plans before. Some of them were excellent plans right up until other people became involved.
Rest Is Not the Same as Doing Nothing
Am I planning to spend the winter lounging in a comfortable chair, drinking something warm, contemplating the mysteries of the universe, and occasionally emerging from my peaceful retreat to light a candle?
That sounds lovely.
No.
I should. I am “retired” after all.
I will still be working. I will still have clients, writing commitments, family responsibilities, and all the ordinary demands of a life that does not conveniently shut down for the winter. I enjoy much of my work, and I have no desire to abandon the parts that give me satisfaction and purpose.
What I want to change is the amount of energy I spend on things that don’t need as much of me as I’ve been giving them.
I want to stop automatically accepting additional responsibilities simply because I know I can handle them. I want to be more deliberate about which projects deserve my attention and which can continue perfectly well without my constant supervision. I want to notice when something is costing more than it returns, whether that cost is financial, emotional, physical, or simply the number of hours I will never get back.
And I want to remember that being capable of doing something is not, by itself, a compelling reason to do it.
That last one has taken me a while.
There’s an important difference between having nothing to do and having enough room in your life to do what matters without running yourself into the ground. I don’t expect an empty calendar. I’d simply like one that doesn’t appear to have been assembled by someone who actively dislikes me.
The Things That Happen Underground
We often describe the dark half of the year as a period of rest, but the natural world isn’t actually doing nothing. Roots remain alive. Seeds wait. Soil continues its complicated work. Animals adapt. Life carries on in forms that are less visible to us, and what appears inactive may be engaged in processes that won’t become apparent until the light returns.
I think there’s something useful in that distinction.
We’re accustomed to measuring accomplishment by visible results. What did we finish? What did we produce? What did we accomplish that somebody else can see, purchase, read, approve, or applaud? It’s easy to become so occupied with demonstrating productivity that we forget to ask whether all that activity is accomplishing anything worthwhile.
A tree in January doesn’t feel compelled to produce a quarterly report explaining why it hasn’t grown any new leaves.
At least, I assume it doesn’t.
I’ve never asked one.
Perhaps I should.
What I’ve been doing this past week feels a little like preparing the ground for a different kind of growth. I’m not abandoning my work or expecting the world to stop making demands. I’m trying to create conditions in which I can continue doing the things I value without continually exhausting the resources I need to do them.
There is a certain irony in the fact that this preparation has left me rather tired. Still, I can see the difference between exhaustion that comes from endlessly maintaining an overloaded schedule and the temporary effort involved in making that schedule more manageable.
One has no obvious end. The other, with luck, produces something better.
The Earth Can Go Ahead
Samhain will arrive soon enough, whether I’m ready or not. The year will continue turning, the days will continue shortening, and the natural world will make its seasonal adjustments without consulting my calendar.
I don’t expect to become a model of winter tranquility. I know myself better than that. I’ll still get enthusiastic about projects, underestimate how long things will take, and occasionally find myself working much later than I intended. There will be unexpected demands, inconvenient developments, and probably at least one situation that causes me to stare at my carefully constructed plan and mutter something unprintable.
But I’m going into this dark half of the year with a clearer understanding of what I want my days to look like and what I’m willing to do to protect them.
For me, that’s a meaningful way of honoring the season. I’ve looked at what I’ve harvested, what I’ve spent, what I’ve given away, and what I need to preserve if I want to keep doing the work I love. I’ve made some decisions about what will continue growing and what I’m no longer prepared to cultivate.
I don’t know whether A Plan will survive the winter intact. Probably not. Plans are like that. But at least I’ve stopped waiting for life to become quieter on its own and started making some room for quiet where I can.
So the Earth can go ahead and settle down for the season.
I’ll be along shortly.
I just need to finish a few things.
According to A Plan, considerably fewer things than before.
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As Editor of the Green Egg Blog, Katrina Rasbold weaves ancient wisdom into the complexities of modern life, fostering a space for deep inquiry and magical growth. Katrina is the editor of Green Egg Magazine, a priestess, author, and co-creator of the CUSP path, working from the crossroads of tradition and transformation. She owns and operates Crossroads Occult with her husband, Eric, offering a sanctuary for those seeking mentorship, quality handmade magical items, and authentic craft. Discover her full body of work at www.katrinarasbold.com.