Joy Is Year-Round

Athena Dixon on why it's important to cultivate seasons of pleasure

On a chilly September Wednesday, during a rare lull at my day job, I jotted down 11 ideas on a piece of bright yellow legal paper. My handwriting looped messily over the lines as I tried to squeeze in a few thoughts before the phone rang or the Teams chat dinged or someone stopped by with a question. I started and stopped through a handful of those interruptions until by the time I shut down my computer at 4:30 and headed out for my commute I’d come up with a rough sketch of my ideas. I knew I’d have to parse out the mess later, but I felt satisfied I was onto something.

The points, some fully fleshed and others just wisps of ideas, marked the beginning of my “quiet season.” The phrase had come up in multiple therapy sessions. I’d mulled over the idea as I tried to fall asleep late into the evening. I tried to put my finger on why I was starting to feel a bit wound down. Why it felt that as the seasons were changing so was I. The pull toward a quiet season wasn’t necessarily sadness. It wasn’t even melancholy. It wasn’t a depressive lull. What was settling over me was the need to be quiet in all ways—physically, creatively, and personally.

As the summer started to come to a close, I’d naturally started retreating to my bedroom as soon as I got home from work. I’d turn on a playlist with the volume so low I could barely hear it. Then I’d switch on my bedside lamps and let the bright overhead lights stay off. I’d burrow under my comforter and read or listen to the street noise outside my window until I finally switched my brain back on just enough to answer a few emails or write a bit. I didn’t necessarily feel like talking and I certainly didn’t feel like socializing. I just wanted to be. In my body. In my brain. In silence.

But there was another layer to this, too. It wasn’t flouncing like I’d mentioned in an earlier column a couple of months ago. I wasn’t necessarily interested in seeing if anyone cared if I was being quiet. There wasn’t some grudge I was holding or some slight perpetrated against me, either. But just as I was retreating to my bed after work, I also felt little desire or need to be social. That meant that if I wasn’t being contacted or checked on then I just didn’t feel like saying anything or doing the reaching out. I figured that the less contact I had the better. It meant whatever energy I had I could conserve for later.

I could have called this a brumation season—a time when my life would be dormant and I could survive the fall and winter by conserving all the joy I’d spent the spring and summer cultivating. But this wasn’t quite right. I was feeling quiet, not like I wanted to slip underground and not see the sun for the next few months. What seemed to make more sense was to harvest the good of the summer season and then tend to the spaces inside me so they’d keep my spirit fertile in the quiet times. Maybe I’d be ready to bloom again in the spring. A fallow season. That’s what I was feeling.

A fallow season just meant a different kind of care and cultivation. The fields remain unsown, letting time and the elements help the soil retain moisture and nutrients until it is time to plant again. This makes sense. In the dusk of my bedroom and my silent drives home I’d already started to ruminate and live in a different kind of way. Summer had been full of boisterous laughter and my skin prickled with heat. It was full of dinners, concerts, trips, and living out loud. Fall was still for living but in a different way. Those ideas I jotted down circled the thought that I should concentrate on the roots, those parts of me dug in deeply that nourished me, and the very actions that would help the blooms of spring be even more beautiful when the seasons changed again.

There were a couple of fundamental truths I needed to set for myself as fall, my long favorite time of year, came on. The first point I wrote was “Quiet does not have to equal depression.” I’ve been honest about my depression. I know when I am feeling the slide into something a little too heavy to carry. So I had to be clear that me being in a quiet season wasn’t cause for me to associate this time with some of the darker ones in my past. I knew that I would have to teach myself that quiet doesn’t have to be the product of bad mental health, exhaustion, or burnout. I’ve shut down and been quiet in the face of these feelings more than my fair share, but this was something new. Just as I’d made a concentrated effort to live into joy, I had to make the conscious decision to live into a joyous quiet, too.

As the list I made at my desk continued, I scribbled that this season wasn’t “obvious luxury, just taking care of myself softly.” Not the social media version of a soft life but a life with built-in comfort that wasn’t dependent on how much money I spent, where I traveled, or what I could purchase. For me that looks like taking the vitamins and supplements I’ve been avoiding in the hopes they will improve my sleep. Cooking more than ordering in because the slowness of preparing a meal is time to settle and be nourished. It means decluttering my space so I can have more clarity physically and emotionally. I want what I no longer need to flutter away like autumn leaves.

The quiet season got me to thinking. What happens to my pleasure as it switches over to the fall? When there is a dying off of activities and life starts to move a little closer to home and the days get shorter? I’ve challenged myself to understand this change isn’t always painful or explosive. Sometimes it's just a natural shedding for new growth. Fall is renewal, I think. It’s that fallow season again. When the crops of warmer months are harvested and the remains start to die off, there has to be a plan to keep the soil fertile. You let things rest and come back to center before you plant again. Dormancy is necessary sometimes. I’m in a fallow season. I’ve expended so much energy living the life I’d always hoped I would be brave enough to attempt that now it is time to renew. It’s time for me to tuck away and slow down just a bit.

Next to my desk phone, my list rambled into more practical things like saving and paying down debt—the very unsexy part of the process, but still actions that would allow me to hide away a little bit more. By the time I finished reviewing the makings of my plan it had all come together. I’d spend the next months nurturing myself in silence. I’d go fallow and let the quieter parts of myself replenish. I decided to prioritize those parts of me I’d placed to the side in favor of living the bolder life I yearned for when I moved to Philadelphia over a decade ago. Fall, and moving into winter, wouldn’t only be about quiet; it would be about me coming back to center via a season built upon solo time and reflection. There was no shame or failure in this change. Summer doesn’t last year-round. What would be the fun if it did? Different seasons call for different methods, new expectations and experiences.

At the end of the list, right before I left work and headed back to the comfort of my bed, I jotted down that no matter what happened I was allowing myself to feel how I was feeling and to allow my actions to reflect what I needed. Just as much as I needed to be out in the world, connecting with everything the hot months had to offer, I also needed this shedding, this slowdown, this renewal to be a fuller version of myself, the version of me accepting joy in whatever form it comes.

Athena Dixon is the author of essay collections The Incredible Shrinking Woman and The Loneliness Files and her work appears in publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Shenandoah, Grub Street, Narratively, and Lit Hub among others. She is a Consulting Editor for Fourth Genre and the Nonfiction/Hybrid Editor for Split/Lip Press.