November
Time, tinsel, and Essay Camp
Where has all the time gone? I swear it was only a couple of days ago I wrote and scheduled October’s newsletter and now I’m writing November’s and how can that be possible?
It’s not as if I can’t look back in my diary at my schedule, which for the most part I’ve kept to fairly religiously, and see that I’ve used each day well. It’s just that I don’t feel like I perceived any of it. It just happened around me and now tomorrow is December and I could really do with a few extra days just to catch up with myself.
Part of it, I’m sure, is the weather. Up until the last few days it’s not been cold enough for my brain to register the transition from Autumn to Winter. Now that most mornings are frosty and for every grey miserable day there is a cold, bright one it at last feels like I’m in the right season.
I must also freely admit that, until a couple of days ago, I wasn’t really going to put up any decorations for Midwinter or Christmas. This decision was based on the fact that back in January I spent a long time packing all the decorations away very carefully and safely so they wouldn’t need anything else doing to them before they got put on a removal lorry. The thought of laboriously unpacking it all and then repeating the process in January was just too much for me, mostly because although the move hasn’t happened yet, I’m as certain as I can be that 2024 is the year when we get where we’ve been trying to go since 2018 and so the packing will not have been in vain.
“We’ll be fine with a bit of foliage from the garden and a few strings of fairy lights this year”, I told myself. Mum and Dad said, as they always have with what we do over the festive season, “whatever makes you happy” and so I thought we were sorted. Until, that is, a lovely friend pointed out that whilst it might be practical, doing next to nothing didn’t sound as if it was going to make me happy. And I had to admit they were absolutely right.
As a child, decorating for Christmas was one of my favourite things. There were paper chains and tinsel and stars and baubles and I had a tiny artificial tree in my room we put up during the last weekend in November. The real tree was procured and decorated the moment the school holidays started, sometimes the weekend before, and usually looked like the result of an explosion in a decoration factory. When I moved into my first home I really went to town the first Christmas, garlands up the stairs, lights everywhere both inside and out, greenery arranged in every possible corner. And it stayed up until the last possible moment, only reluctantly being put away the evening of January 6th.
Despite the fact that Christmas when I was married was a fraught and difficult time (the burden of all of it fell on me and it was never good enough no matter what I did) and in the first few years after my divorce I found it hard to relax and enjoy any of it, I’ve done my best to rekindle the love I once had for the excuse to turn my living space into a glittering, twinkling, candle lit representation of joy. I’ve made new traditions, returned to some old ones I’d set aside, reimagined and reworked and made my peace with the years when I’d have cheerfully pretended it wasn’t happening and hidden in a hotel had I been able to. I realised I didn’t want to put all that aside, even for a year, especially when (as my friend also gently and kindly pointed out) you never really know that ‘doing it right’ next year is going to be an option.
So I did some rummaging in the last few cupboards I hadn’t cleared and purchased a few small things cheaply in the last hurrah of the Black Friday sales so that, whilst it’ll be a miniature version of what I usually do, there will be door wreaths and a table wreath, many, many strings of fairy lights, a very tiny tree, some rather mismatched baubles, and a lot of glittery stars crocheted from the £2.99 ball of gold lame yarn I found in the charity shop.
Some of it will go up tomorrow, in my parents house, to mark the start of Advent along with an advent candle, one of Angela Harding’s beautiful advent calendars. Then it will be taken down so it can travel with us all to my house, where all of it will be put up again - alongside quite a lot of greenery from the garden and many, many candles - and then up it will stay until twelfth night. And I can’t wait. Just typing this has put a massive smile on my face!
Crochet-wise, I have been working on a few teeny-tiny-fit-inside-a-christmas-card seasonal gifts when I’ve had a moment. I’ve also found and started a pattern, for a roll-neck jumper, which definitely qualifies as the “levelling up the skills” project I mentioned I was looking for last time, both in the sense that I’ve never crocheted a jumper before and because, for once, I intend to follow the pattern to the letter rather than making adjustments just because it seems like a good idea. I also found some worsted weight yarn that I had overlooked when packing up most of my stash, which seems to be the perfect thing to use. And look how lush the colour is:
Writing-wise I kept to what I said in my October newsletter and there has not been any attempt at NaNo. However my writing FOMO asserted itself quite strongly and rather than telling it to get knotted I joined in with Summer Brennan’s Essay Camp instead. Since there was no word count, only the commitment to writer something each day, preferably a “five things” prompt or part of an actual essay, and an optional challenge to produce one essay during the month, it felt far more doable given my other commitments. It’s been a brilliant experience, I now have a bank of essay ideas to noodle about with as and when I want them, and it didn’t get in the way of me writing my blog posts and monthly Tale from the Wildwood at all. What it actually did was generate over 30,000 words, the most I’ve written in a month for far this year.
I say so far because I’m hoping to keep going with the daily five things essay prompts during December, alongside completing the Writers’ HQ Writing Advent of Inspirational Awesomeness and getting all my planned posts out too. We shall see how it all goes but right now I’m feeling wildly inspired and energetically creative so fingers crossed it stays that way.
As for what I’ve written and shared this month, and where you can find it, this is the list with links:
• The Small Things Spreading Joy in October
• “Homework” Essay for Essay Camp
• This Sparks Joy! Autumn 2023 Edition
• Empty Nest, Full Heart (the newest Flashes of Feathers tale)
Finally, as always, I have pulled a tarot card from my Wildwood deck to give us all a little insight into what December might bring:
I have said, repeatedly, that this deck is not remotely subtle and it’s certainly going out of its way this month to prove me right. In December the prevailing social pressures are all about going home to celebrate the festivities with family. This card is acknowledging that push whilst also subverting it slightly. Home is where the heart it, and that need not be where we grew up or with those people we’re told we should want to be with. This card is giving us permission to gather with our true tribe, whether that be blood relations or found family, and celebrate that love and companionship in a way that matters to us. We don’t have to confirm to what society deems acceptable, we just have to focus on the people and activities who make our hearts happy.
So, as we move towards the shortest day of the year I wish you the happiest of winter seasons and leave you with a blessing:
May the journey to the shortest day bring you brightness and joy, enough to light your days and warm your heart until we reach the Spring.