First published: Nov. 5, 2023 | Permalink | RSS

The Wissahickon Creek flowing from around the corner through orange leaved tees that have dropped about 20% of their leaves

Autumn is in full show here in Philadelphia, at least up in the Northwest of Philly where I now live. The colors are a great time to reflect on the passage of time. It being the weekend daylight savings ends is also a big hint that time is always changing, even if only arbitrarily.

I am grateful to see the leaves change like this and for consistent access to more trees in general than I had experienced in South Philly. Despite being much closer to the Wissahickon park, I still don't go there often enough (at least not as often as I'd like to). I also appreciate the irony that as a teenager, I completely took for granted the massive forests around me in Northeast PA, but mostly because I wanted to be closer to my friends.

I've gone through a lot of changes to my daily life this year: My employer got acquired, the new employer laid me off, I am joining the Code for Philly leadership team, and Ruby is kicking up her business again! I'm still expecting more changes to my daily life before the end of the year.

Changes can be very hard, and many people are resistant to them. I had to learn to weather changes as a child who attended at least one new school every year until the sixth grade. Then in my late teens and early twenties I welcomed changes to help get me into better places. When I can afford to, I also bring on daily changes as recreation in the form of bike tours. Each day is a different ride to a different place and I rarely wake up in the same place twice on those trips. I even planned a trip in 2019 along the East Coast Greenway to follow the beginning of the changing leaves that year.

A huge change for me in the last year was buying a house with Ruby. What's especially wild about that is that we effectively signed up to be involved with this one house and piece of land for thirty years! Granted, we don't have to stay here for thirty years if we don't want, but a mortgage is still on that scale of financial planning. And for most future plans, selling this house would lead to buying another.

This is often a "stage" of American life where a person really wants to stop changes. They want to keep their neighborhood exactly like it was when they bought their home. But I try to remember change is inevitable. Planets and stars continue moving through space. Water pulls mountains down towards oceans. Winds push leaves and seeds off plants. I hope I can continue to take on changes with grace and never try to lock my life in place.

I still don't feel ready for winter, but there is certainly still time to prepare. And arguably, that is the purpose of a transitional time like the fall to help us get ready for the cold and dark. That we can slowly approach the hard things and steel ourselves to them as they creep closer. I tend to be an optimist and one way that hurts me is that I spend most of the winter just looking ahead to springtime rather than embracing what winter has to offer.

This year I want to commit to changing my approach to winter: To use the inside time to improve my engineering and my art. To make more time for friends to get together. To take advantage of the slowed plant growth to prepare an overgrown lot to become a garden. To spend time decorating my house. This winter I want to resist hibernating.

Thank you for reading!