It’s autumn here in East Tennessee and it’s shouted its arrival in a big way. I’m talking colors here. Big, bold, vibrant, HELLO LOOK AT ME! colors that stop you dead in your tracks to gawk at the amazement of Mother Nature. And today was the perfect day to enjoy the full show in the Smoky Mountains.
Fall seems like such an oxymoron. Trees pop with color in such a vivacious tribute to life and yet the glorious show is a prelude to death. After a couple of weeks the leaves shrivel and drop to the ground into brittle debris, ultimately becoming fertilizer to new life.
This bold season feels like a metaphor for mid-life. These are the years when many of us leave our professions behind to re-invent new lives. To discover new passions, friends, experiences. And in many ways I feel more alive now than the days I was engrossed in my paid working hours.
Work life was thrilling for me yet was surprisingly predictable in its unpredictability. Make sense? Every day we had a new show to produce or stories to write or projects to continue with the same constraints to face and paradigm to follow. Every morning I knew what my office hours were likely to be.
Now each day offers a blank canvas to paint whatever picture comes to mind (metaphorically speaking since I don’t paint). 
And I can invent what my next years may look like. I’ve grown my hair longer, dropped a few pounds and have become quite active through bicycling, horseback riding, hiking and attending more yoga classes. I feel like I’m on the cusp of something new.
Is autumn to winter as mid-life is to old age? Could this time period be our final hurrah?
actthreedotnet 
You make it sound all so beautiful, and your pictures show it so.
So far it is Randall. Thanks so much.
Very insightful analogy. I guess I know what kind of mood I’ll be in when I retire. If it’s anything like the mood autumn puts me in, no one will want to be around me 🙂
Fall is beautiful, but it anounces to me the impending doom of the coming winter. Brrrr. I have trouble being happy with the cooler temperatures and beautiful colors because I know what’s coming!
If I didn’t have a gorgeous eternity to look forward too, I would already be depressed about my inevitable death, and I’m only in my early thirties!
Amy, that’s unfortunate to just be in your 30s and to forget to live life in the present. All we have is the present because we have no idea what tomorrow brings. Winter can be a time of introspection — reading, fires, soups. There is no benefit to viewing winter in terms of doom and gloom. It’ll happen regardless of your attitude. That you can’t stop. What you can change is your perspective about it. And if you do, life might actually become more enjoyable!
Thanks for your encouragement! I’m a generally happy person, but winter makes me cold. And being cold makes me unproductive! I’m going to try to stay indoors and stay warm this winter. Now that I’m through with college, I don’t have to run around as much as I used to, so I’m hoping for the best winter yet!
there you go!
Love the Tennessee Fall Joyce…and I also love the winter’s….the bareness of all my surroundings allows me to look beyond the at-hand beauty…like looking into the soul and finding what really makes me tick.
*Amy…consider adding some warm spices to your diet during winter…will warm the fuel that makes you go…cinnamon, cayenne pepper, clove, ginger, tumeric, etc.
Nothing quite as tasty as a cup of rich hot chocolate with a dash of cayenne pepper…until you try it, you can’t imagin the flavor.:)
Thanks for the advice! Anything those spices would taste good in other than tea or hot chocolate? Soups, maybe? As of my last uti/kidney infection, I intend to only drink water and an occasional glass of milk for the rest of my life!
I’m going to try that hot chocolate with a dash of cayenne pepper. I saw a gelato flavored that way and it seemed so odd. But Now I’m going to give it a go!