I usually love this time of year. I love the colours and smells of autumn. The rainy weekends spent lying in bed reading. The flat full of lit candles smelling of amber, sandalwood and frankincense. Endless homemade soup. Butternut squash fatigue (this is actually a thing).
This year's autumn has bought with it an unexpectedly bitter after taste. A sense of melancholy and the pressing weight of things not yet achieved. The quiet and niggling (and completely false, fear-based) worry that since I haven't spent the last five years creating a family I should have achieved something amazing in its place. Yes, I have a bad dose of the shoulds. Symptoms include lethargy, ingratitude, endless compare and despair and, in my case, the panic buying of kimonos. Because if I'm a single creatrix, a woman about town, I should be more bohemian and should possess more bohemian clothes. Linen smocks for example. Alas H and M don't sell those.
Luckily the shoulds are treatable with warm baths, getting outside, the last of the year's flowers, painting and nice socks. I'm prescribing myself a lifetime's supply of treatment.
