Things I Discovered During My First Fall
here you go, the things i feel, fell and fly for, fall edition.
It’s mid-December. Rather than writing about fall, it seems more suiting that I write about the cold – correction, freezing season, Christmas season, or about the ending and beginning of a year. But.. maybe that’s for later. That is, if I find the motivation to sit down and write my thoughts about it. Today, I’d like to give the little world of my audience – which, God knows how much it will be. It might even be just my sister, the long-standing supporter of my writing businesses. – a peek into what autumn/fall had done to me. Damn it, you autumn, please don’t make my life miserable.
**Mind you, I’m new in this four-season-living world. This is my first fall, and if you’ve discovered my previous post first, you’d know how much I romanticize the firsts. So this short season can be a little special, and in some sense sensitive for me.
Now, shall we start oversharing?
1. I’ve been off-track.
“Where’s the Fatiha that decided to start using Notion to see clearly and organize her life in 2021?” I found myself questioning this one autumn day.
My sister, yes, the last-standing (hopefully only in my exaggerated mind) supporter, sent me a picture of the yellowing trees near her campus.
My thoughts, almost in order: Beautiful. I like the color. That’s a cute yellow, not too piercing, almost pastel. Hold on. Why aren’t the trees here turning yellow? Why does it immediately turn red?
I felt like there wasn’t any transition or distinction at all, between the summer and the fall leave colors. That’s quite unfair, isn't it? I thought. I wanted to experience all of fall, the colors, the process, everything. Less than twelve hours after my annoyed declaration — which I mostly kept to myself —, I found myself holding the brakes of my bike and getting off it to snap a picture or two of a couple of trees standing inside the park on my way home. They were yellow. And the sad part: I go through the same way every day, but I’ve only noticed the fact that there are yellow leaves, among the red ones here, on that day. Only after I thought some things are sad or unfair, that I realize that they are not that sad, nor unfair.
The Fatiha who’s all about mindfulness was far from present during the beginning of autumn. She wasn’t “present”, her head was somewhere but her body was surely starting to freeze.
2. Re-realization: I don’t have to always be happy
Two things I noticed: Autumn is way too cold already for me, which we’ve already iterated and established earlier, and that I’m not exactly in my happiest phase. Not noticing things is pathetic, in my opinion. You miss the yellow leaves by the street, you miss the decreasing temperature. The leaves are suddenly red, the temperature is suddenly nearing one digit.
And comes the more miserable part of me being off-track from the mindful Fatiha framework I created. I forgot to tell myself how I’ve been feeling. Do this, do that, don't forget the thing. I had busied myself and packed my days but I didn’t make time to pause. I fill up my weekdays with school, my evenings with homework, and my remaining available time for organization or plans with friends. When’s your personal time?
For a moment the time I had left to myself was to shower, scroll a little bit of social media before bed, and go to bed. Nothing close to being mindful. Then I lose a little bit of the busyness. But the lack of attention I give to myself stayed the same. I stopped listening to my thoughts and my feelings. And I figured, maybe that’s why I stopped noticing things, too. I don't even take value in noticing the little things going on in my life, let alone the color of the trees.
Again, I haven’t been on top of the world, or jumpy about life, in a while. And that’s more than okay. You can’t be in a never-ending loop of happiness. You’ll get tired. (That’s just my opinion).
3. Make a move.
Going back a bit to my 2021 Notion era, that time I had read one of the best books to exist on my bookshelf: The Atomic Habits by James Clear. One of the things I underlined, remembered, and ought to stand by, is that we should shift from motion to action. Clear mentioned that motion is the act of planning, organizing, and strategizing, like making goals and putting tasks in a calendar, while action refers to taking the action towards the goal itself. A lot of times without realizing, people plan a lot without actually doing anything to reach their goals. When this happens, what you want to achieve becomes merely a floating hope, reaching nowhere. That hope needs directing. It’s like a boat prepared with a captain, fuel, map, but the steer is left untouched.
This season I took the advantage of pressure and panic from opportunities and people as a reminder and pushed myself forward. It’s devastating to think you might lose a good opportunity. So I made use of it. To actually get what I’ve been wanting. To figure out myself and do something about it. Daydreaming is fun, but getting somewhere is also part of life.
4. I have a lot, A LOOT of caring, supportive people around me. And I don’t know how I feel about it.
The season had been quite a ride. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun one. But also ridiculously tricky in the way that I am facing new things all the time. (I mean, if not, I wouldn’t feel like I’m a 17 years old sitting in a place far away from my family, almost alone, right?) So, how did I get through it?
It would be wrong if I said I myself don’t have a role in this. I leave no uncredited worker here, okay? I give credit to myself. She’s one weirdly tough person. And of course, the people around me — literally and not literally. The people who were there for me in my confused moments — physically or virtually. The people that merely exist and act nice around me. You all played a big role in this little chapter of mine.
I’ve made clear enough explanations in the section title. Many people around me care for and show support for me. Somehow, even with the people I’ve grown distanced from or people I haven’t lost distance from (re: the people I was once close with and those who aren’t close yet), I feel hugged in some ways. Patted on the shoulder and told that I’d be fine.
But isn’t it a good thing? It’s a great thing. Beyond great. It’s just the fear that I’d lose them, or my gratefulness towards them. It’s the fear that I’ll get used to the encouragement and the care, that I’ll start taking them for granted. And it’s also the fear that comes with the knowledge that, people stop by your life temporarily. Or at least that’s how I believe the world works.
5. I learned to understand.
No, I didn’t put the only point somehow related to my bland relationship encounters as the last one because I want it to be special. I put it there because I’ve put it behind, kind of. I’m glad, really. That I can level up in my letting go game. Something worth clapping for: I’m not only faking it – all words but still lowkey care about some stuff, I’m actually growing out and letting go of it. *cue claps*
By letting go I don’t mean giving zero f*cks about something or someone. I mean to let go of any baseless, unrealistic hopes and expectations of things that don’t take meaning in you as much as how much they mean to you. I knew for quite some time already that I shouldn’t care about someone who doesn’t care about me. Or that I at least should stop doing so when I realize it. But hey, it’s true what they say. That saying is much easier than doing. And I think when you successfully understand — that some things aren’t meant to mean a certain way in your life and that despite the “normal” qualities you think people have, some people are just “abnormal”. Or in other words, not everyone is how you expect them to be —, you would start understanding that people can act a certain way, and you would grow out of your own expectations. You would accept things as they are. And that’s the ending you’d want. Cause again: why care about someone who doesn't do the same to you? This is just a personal opinion, but.. Save your time worrying about something better.
And sorry if reading this didn’t save your time to do something else that might be more important to you. See you next time, hopefully.
