Today I was making a list of things I needed to do during the rest of my working week. When I had jotted down all my work-related must-do’s, I concluded I had a few spare hours left. Thus, I enthusiastically wrote down one of the long term projects that wasn’t very urgent, but which I could finally spend some time on. Then I realised: I completely forgot to plan time for me to write my column!

Now, you may need some background information on this: I’ve only just yet become a real, official, formally existing independent writing professional. Or to put it simply: I have my own little company and try to make money out of writing things. It’s brilliant but time-consuming and I should have known my column would suffer the consequences.

It’s funny how you can be so absorbed by new things that you tend to forget the things you were absorbed with a few months earlier. It’s like serial monogamy but without the relations. I could talk about being a busy workaholic for ages. However, I wasn’t very sure whether either the subject of being busy or writing about forgetting to write my column would make a good column.

Totally against my principles I phoned Maia to ask her what to write about.
“Uhm, how about the fact that everybody is so busy during this time of the year?” was her first response. Right, so I was onto something.

Maia was experiencing the same awkward feeling of being so terribly busy that she constantly forgot to do certain things. She told me she had this feeling every year and always during autumn. Together we wondered why. Could it be because summertime, being the silly season with all its holidays, was over and we needed to get used to working again? Or is it the magic deadline of the 31th of December and the need we feel to accomplish our personal goals before the new year begins?

Now I was in an interviewing mode anyway I thought I might as well discuss things with Matt. Hardly surprising, he felt autumn was a tough time for work as well. “I think it has something to do with the wintertime. Our bodies need more energy to stay warm, so there’s less energy left for other activities. Consequently, these activities feel like they take more effort. So you feel more busy and stressed.” “You mean, our bodies are preparing for winter, and we are trying to fight that?” “Hm-hm.”

I thought Matt had a very good point there. Feeling busy during the autumn months is just exactly the same as having difficulties trying to get up in the morning when it’s still dark. Nature really wants us to slow down in the colder seasons. Nevertheless, we don’t listen. The entire ecosystem, except humans, slows down during these months. That is why farmers have to do a lot of work in the summer and hardly anything in the winter. Because the rest of the plants and animals do listen to nature screaming: slow down!

The majority of us don’t bother to listen to this call of nature, mostly because we would probably lose our jobs if we did. Our bosses at our 9 to 5 office jobs won’t care whether we feel less well and awake during the colder season. Turn on the heat. Put on an extra sweater. Whatever. Just don’t dare to become if only the slightest less productive.

It’s weird to realise there’s grown such a great gap between the true form of nature’s time and the way humans choose to deal with it. I always thought I’d integrated nature’s ways quite well and respectfully in my own personal life. Apparently I missed a very important part and unfortunately there’s nothing I can do about it. Because there’s no way I will just surrender and quit working merely because it’s cold and dark outside.

However, realising all this did make me feel intriguingly connected to nature. I felt like a tiny part of a magnificent ecosystem and its funny way of forcing itself upon us. I’ve never felt such a part of nature before. Not like today, feeling utterly busy, and forgetting to write my column.

Column published by Cecile on Monday, November 5th, 2007.

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