The Eclipse Made Me Feel Autumnal

It was dark, it was 6pm and I was cooking up a big bowl of vodka pasta with garlic bread. Truthfully I didn’t care about the eclipse (it was the lack of being a woman in STEM) but all of a sudden I appreciated the feeling of autumn it made me have.

Now, if you’ve met me you would know I LOVE the “ber” months (September to December). It’s not that I hate summer, it’s more that I love being by myself. Stay with me because I know you’re thinking “what even is the correlation there?” I believe summer is for extroverts, winter is for introverts. I don’t think I’m outright an introvert but I know I’m definitely NOT an extrovert. I often describe myself as an ambivert (a mix of both an introvert and extrovert) but sway more to the introverted side. Recently I’ve realised I might just actually be an introvert.

I think the reason I love autumn and winter so much is because people don’t tend to leave their homes. They only go out when necessary, and when you see people on the street it’s always just a quick “hello, how are you?” and that’s because you spend the whole winter quoting “DON’T MAKE UNNECESSARY JOURNEYS!” Summer however, is generally more sociable; beer gardens, barbecues and beach trips. Which don’t get me wrong I love and appreciate at certain times, but then I get home from these social events and have to sit a room by myself and not speak to anyone for 3 hours after. I think I really REALLY value my alone time, maybe not necessarily more than others, but to me it has always been a priority.

Ironically, journalism is quite a social job, my job will quite literally be me speaking to people all day. But that doesn’t feel too much to me, maybe it’s because I enjoy it so much. I’ve worked in customer service for 4 years now, and let me tell you, that is my reminder to both stay in school but also to prioritise my own time. I come home most days from work drained socially from customers attitudes (this could literally be a three part blog series) to having to communicate with other people in the shop (that is not me saying I don’t like my co workers, but when I have a customer being sassy it gets a lot ok). The two weeks I spent as an intern journalist, I learned I can socialise for 8 hours, don’t get me wrong I do still be tired, but not as tired. I think it’s because I was surrounded by very like minded people and people who wanted the same thing out of the job. I don’t know it’s just a thought.

It’s funny how the moon literally just crossing over with the sun can spark this amount of thought out of a person. But someone said my thoughts about it were original (whether that was sarcasm or not I do not know) so I thought I could make a full blog post out of this. I mean the conclusion is I don’t LOVE people but I do LOVE my own company and especially in the winter when it’s more socially acceptable to be by yourself. Are you more of a summer or winter person?

Let me know what you think, and I’ll see you in the next one.

Eva:)