November's golden light - fight, flight, insight?

The thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of.

Henry David Thoreau

(1817-1862)

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth

seeking the successive autumns.

George Eliot

(1819-1880)

Even if something is left undone, everyone must take time to sit still and watch the leaves turn.

Elizabeth Lawrence

(1904-1985)

I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its tone is mellower, its colours are richer, and it is tinged with a little sorrow. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content.

Lin Yutang

(1895-1976)

Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity; but it is also breadth, and depth,

and distance.

Hal Borland

(1900-1978)

This time of year is always one of introspection for me; time to take stock and make plans. It's not always a comfortable process but it's apparently as necessary and inevitable as the changing of the leaves and the shortening of the days. I've come to accept that. I don't fight it anymore.

Normally it involves looking at where I am, what I'm feeling about where I am, and reviewing the plan. It's a big list, my plan. Dreams big and small. Some things are intended to be achieved in a year (or less), some in a lifetime. In a good year it involves checking off those things achieved (and celebrating being able to do that), rolling over any that remain from that year to the next (and I've come to accept that there may be a few of these too), and (most excitingly) considering what to add. Tweaking the plan is an ongoing exercise, but revising the plan in this way, an annual event.

This year I'm distressed to find that I have very few things to take off the list and the overwhelming feeling is one of having spent a year running very hard and very fast, to stand still. Err, that's not good.

I wonder whether it's because the things on the list are not things I actually want to achieve? Surely if they were important to me, I'd be motivated to make them happen? So I look at the list critically. Nope, all good stuff. All things I still feel I'd like to manifest in my life.

Perhaps even more disturbingly, I find it hard to think of new things to add. Things that energise and excite me. That's not good either.

This has not been the worst year ever. There've been others that have brought much harder challenges. And there's been fair bit of good stuff this year actually - some of it unplanned and all the more enjoyable as a result (there's always room in a good plan for a little of the unexpected). But overall it's felt like a year of relentless swimming against a strong current. I've slept less and worked harder and it doesn't seem to have moved me on, or any closer to my biggest goals, personal or professional. I'm tired. But restless.

And when I read back over my journals, I find I've been singing the same song since this time last year and beyond. I'm bored with singing it. I'm bored with the sound of it. Stagnation is in many ways worse to me than having a mountain to climb.

Ironically, my guiding principle for the year is all about integrity - aligning what I think and feel and say, completely, with what I do. Surely that means making the list come to life, swimming with the current of authenticity instead of against it? And that means either I'm swimming the wrong way (despite my best intentions) or I'm in the wrong stream. Strange, it didn't seem that way when I stepped in. And when I review the plan, it still looks good. And yet... here I am. Not going anywhere. Fast. And not liking it.

So what's the answer? How do I turn this around? Is it me or the plan that need to change? Or both? And how? Or to what? I have no idea.

I have no idea.

So I guess I'm hoping that if I just pause to reflect and enjoy November's golden light, and the beauty of the changing trees, the answer will swirl out of the leaves and make itself known.

I'm ready.