It’s really not that I do not want to write. Or that I no longer have anything to say. It’s just that before I know it, it’s been a month since I have last written. It always surprises me how quickly time is passing, because I keep thinking that it’s been just a week or two that I last posted here. We keep thinking that once we settle down life will become calmer and slower, because you know, the words “settle down” kind of implies that. But it’s such a lie. It doesn’t get calmer, but it doesn’t necessarily get crazier either. It gets blurrier. Before you know it, you don’t really know where your days go. They just go somewhere.

I should keep track now. Of the sips of coffee I take in the mornings, and the cookies I bake in the evenings and the flowers I water in the afternoons and the trails I hike on Saturdays and the books I manage to finish in a month (which, sadly, is a very low number). I must keep track or I will have nothing that’ll flash before my eyes when it all ends. I must remember the letter I wrote sitting at dining table this afternoon, and the lemon scented candle I lit this evening, and the friend I spoke to after ages, and the squirrels that came to the patio, and the little sparrows that crowded the street this afternoon eating god knows what on the ground (they even stopped traffic).

If there is anything I am learning, it’s this: If we don’t make conscious efforts to make our lives matter to ourselves, it won’t. It won’t matter to us and it wont matter to anyone else. We must hold on to moments we have, grasp on to life’s little joys while we can. Because if we don’t, we wont even know when a month has passed by, and then another, and then another until there are no more months left.

Sigh. I hope you are with me dear readers. Because I do hope that I write, and I do hope that I come back before the month is over.

You know, even if I am in a corner, dying (unless I am already dead!) I would write for my dear October. My old friend is here again and as always it has been a lovely and much awaited reunion. Unlike last year, this year I am walking a lot in October. Embracing every bit of it and that excites me immensely. I greet it in the mornings with its soothing mist and damp grass. I meet it in the afternoons with its not so-hot-and-not-so-cold but just-right, breeze. I hear it from the window during the nights with its orchestra of the swaying branches mixed in with a special melody by the crickets.

Life has been mostly good... and quiet. Quiet is good. Quiet is always good. Don't ever not be grateful for the quiet, because chaos is always lurking beneath and it's only just looking for an opportunity.

So yes, life has been good. My daily struggles involve changing bandages on my feet (because no matter what shoe I wear, it just wouldn't become friends with my feet), and fighting with a spider. There is a spider that made her home outside my gate, by the mailbox, and she just wouldn't leave. Her web looks ugly, and makes it seem as if I don't care for my home.  So giving into my vanity, I have destroyed her home multiple times but she builds it right back up, sometimes within hours. Tough little gal. So there you have it, these days I have been losing to a tiny spider. Sigh.  I may have to call it a truce. I may just give it a name and see what happens. Like Charlotte… (or Aragog?). It looks like we are spending the winter together.

Sometimes we should. Sometimes we should stop fighting and let things run their course. Autumn teaches me that every year. Let go. You can't stop the leaves from changing the colors, dying and disappearing, you can either enjoy the destructive beauty or you can fight it. You'll fight it and you'll lose. Because things have to run their course. And sometimes when we give into the stubbornness, we lose sight of what we are fighting for or fighting with.  For instance,  no matter how I look at it, my vanity is not more important than that poor spider's life. But if I continue at it, soon it will become a matter of pride and I’ll lose sight of the fact that I am about to kill a living thing, for really no reason at all.