All the bright yellow leaves have fallen from the gray sky. They lay on the ground like sunlight seeping under the door of a shuttered room.
I tweeted that last Friday when I arrived at work, before the clouds cleared. I thought of it again on this morning's drive, seeing all the bright leaves on the ground, somehow turning the world topsy-turvy with all the sunny brightness coming from below.
I wanted to get outside today for a walk, but had a tight deadline to meet by the end of the day, so I worked through lunch and barely left my desk, save for a meeting. The last couple of days, I was able to take nice walks mid-day to offset the workstation cramping of my back and brain, to clear my head for half an hour or so. Since the weekend, we've had a few days of glorious Indian summer temperatures and I couldn't resist getting outside to enjoy them.
Indian summer: The wind tosses confetti-diced leaves for the grinning pumpkins. Crows caw in approval.
Yesterday, towards the end of a long workday, a colleague let us know he's leaving to go to another job. He's a good guy and also an excellent writer, very creative, and it's sad. Even in this tough job environment, we're still losing good people. It's a burnout type of job. I think they do try, and people there are nice, but maybe it's in the nature of the work, or maybe it's a culture of never setting limits with client requests for near impossible deadlines. It certainly doesn't help the workload to lose good people. I don't know. For all the times I do enjoy the work and like my colleagues, on the other side of the scale is the heavy thumb of pressures.
Gas-powered leaf blowers, the Tuvan throat singers of the suburbs, performing for an audience of empty houses.
For now I try to place every good work experience on the scale to keep things in balance, plus the salary and benefits, and any bit of appreciation that comes my way. I also offset the load with happy, work-free weekends and restorative nights when I can, and leg- and mind-stretching walking breaks when possible, even if these days those walks are often beset by the leaf-blowing crews.