It’s football season, but the dratted sun and heat keep banging on. It’s September 20th, but the temp has been about 95 degrees every day, interminably.
About a month ago, my sweet grey and tan snippet of a cat died; she whom I had been with for fifteen years. My comfort. My introverted nurturer.
And I’ve been left with a completely new job, an extroverted husband, our exuberant new puppy, and this heat.
I can’t take it.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m an extrovert. I’m an ambivert, anyway. I used to fall in love with true introverts and wear the hell out of them. They were fascinated by me, but they couldn’t keep up. I just made them tired.
But I have been running for too long now.
Like a coffee pot who made its coffee hours ago whose heat mechanism has malfunctioned to “on,” I’ve burned through everything I’ve got and am now crisping the carafe, getting more and more brittle.
I’m an extrovert, but I have to turn inward. I have to have means of turning inward. Or I burn out.
This cat, this nurturer. She caused me to turn inward; she would hop up on my lap when I finally sat down at the end of the day. She would luxuriously stretch and form herself into my arms. Her whole self would say to me, “There, there. Shush now. The work is done. Rest.”
Autumn turns me inward. The heat of the summer is loud, banging, unignorable. The coolness of autumn slows me, brings me into nature, invites me to rest and reflection.
Lesson planning, long-range planning: They turn me inward. Some of my happiest times lately have been alone in my classroom when I have had time to take stock, see where we have been, look at where we need to be going. Reflecting on the big picture fills me.
Madeline L’Engle wrote of this, of her need to be alone, even from the people and things that she loved. She explains that she gets things out of perspective, and only being alone puts her back in to the frame of mind she needs to love and live well. I am the same. Honestly, when I read her on this subject, I cried because it was such a relief to know I was not alone in this. I live in a family and world that is progressively more and more outward-facing, more extroverted. (The puppy doesn’t help matters.) I need to be able to regain perspective.
And it’s not just merely being alone. I can be alone but play on my phone and never get the inward perspective and rest that I need. Some of the feeling of running is my choice by what I choose to do in those idle moments I do have. Do I let myself actually idle, or do I stay turned on, heating my carafe, burning myself out?
It’s football season, but the dratted sun and heat keep banging on. It’s September 20th, but the temp has been about 95 degrees every day, interminably. Surely, surely the season will turn soon.
But until then, I must find ways to turn inward.
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