The Changing of the Seasons

For me, an adult well into my working years, the changing of the seasons is all about practicalities: I need to pull out a jacket for fall because the airplane gets chilly every Tuesday as I fly to the midwest for work, and it is getting even chillier up there as we creep into September.  When our little group of four first started this weekly travel, it was mid-June and the country was in the midst of a heat wave with temperatures well over 100 degrees.  All we could think was “This place is hot!  We will never relocate here!”



It is September now and getting chillier, and I need to stop wearing Capri pants, sleeveless tops and sandals to work – picnic clothes I call them – because one can only go so casual in a professional office environment.  These days I might wear jeans to the office here in the South, while packing worn black work slacks from some not-so-casual job long ago for the office up north where they still adhere to business casual for daily attire.  The truth is I don’t care what I wear because our office here is closing in five months anyway, but I still have to stick loosely to the rules.



For more than ten years here, before all the travel began, I have worked from 7AM to 4PM, so whenever the seasons change, I notice that it gradually gets darker in the mornings as I drive in, and I love it that way.  There is nothing quite so energizing as the refreshing, cool, and magical night air as I cruise easily through the pre-rush-hour traffic each day.  I see red tail lights from the anonymous cars around me...other commuters that have figured out that coming in early and leaving early is really the best way to do the work life.



Come winter, January we hope, our company will be closed and we will get our reward for sticking it out, as the Mother Ship in the midwest absorbs our fledging, out-of-control, frontier of an office in the South.  Fall and winter and Thanksgiving and Christmas will slide by with the work crew getting smaller and smaller as people with no incentive to stay resign one by one and say their good-byes.  There is sadness in watching our friends leave and our work culture dissolve, but it is also tinged with an eagerness and expectation to get this phase over with so we can cut loose from this company and get on with our lives.



Soon enough January and the dead of winter in the South will be here, which might mean nothing more than a dusting of snow on a few very cold days, but more likely, just a lot of rain for weeks on end.  We’ll know in advance when the final day of our company will be and then we’ll start looking, eager for spring and for the next chapter of our lives to begin.