Autumn is my favorite time of year, and I’ve started trying to plan my work so that I have light duty in October. For a long time, I seemed to be in a pattern of writing a first draft in October, which meant that I was in all-or-nothing mode and not doing much else other than writing, and then I’d finish the draft and emerge from my writing cave to realize that the best part of the year had passed without me noticing it. It wasn’t so bad in Texas, since fall usually came in random days during October, and it finally felt like fall around Thanksgiving. Now that I’ve moved, October feels like October should (mostly), and after my first year here, when I was drafting a book during October, I’ve made an effort to break the pattern.

I suspect that a lot of this pattern comes from that “back to school” mentality in September. That’s when I tend to start writing a new series. I do the research and pre-writing work in September, then start drafting in October, and once you sell a book and start that pattern, your deadlines usually line up for the same time every year.

Oddly, as much as October is my favorite time of year, I’m not a huge fan of Halloween. I’m not opposed to it. I find aspects of it amusing. It’s fun to see kids in costumes or see the yard decorations. I just mostly lost interest in observing it myself once I aged out of trick-or-treating. I’m not fond of adult Halloween parties, and I don’t like scary things, so I don’t do Halloween activities like watching scary movies.

What I do like is being outdoors. This is the perfect time of year for it, not too hot (well, except for some days this year) and not too cold (except for some days this year). I like the colorful leaves, apple cider, baked goods with cinnamon and other spices, soup, sweaters, and all things cozy. It’s a good time for hiking or just walking around town. The past couple of days, I’ve walked over to the park to go to the Friends of the Library book sale in the park gym, which meant looking at the trees along the way and generally enjoying being outdoors, then obtaining as many books as I could carry. Yesterday, I took a picnic lunch to eat in the park and hung out for a while, doing some writing work, before I walked home with my book haul. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if it was a bit cooler, the kind of day where you want to make some hot tea when you get home. Instead, I was sweating and needed lots of cool water.

This has been a weird fall, weather-wise. We seemed to go straight from summer to November, then back to summer, and we haven’t a lot of days that were properly October. Now we have a chance of a freeze this weekend, and we haven’t yet really had just a regular fall day. My outdoor plants are still blooming, and I still have tomatoes, so I guess I’ll cover the plants overnight. The trees are still just starting to turn. Next week will probably be the best time to hit the Blue Ridge Parkway to see the mountains in full color. Maybe we’ll get a proper fall day, when it’s nippy in the morning, crisp and cool in the afternoon, warm enough to be out and about with a sweater on, but you want a cup of hot tea when you come home.

When/if that happens, I’ll be ready to take the day to enjoy it, since I’m not writing a first draft right now.

As I continue to recover from my vacation, I’ve been thinking more about how I’d go about making a vacation that I don’t need a vacation to recover from, and the solution may be a “staycation,” taking a break without going anywhere. Then I can get good sleep because I’m sleeping in my own bed and I don’t get tired from the return trip. But the trick is to make it different enough that it feels like a real vacation and not just being at home with more goofing off. This will take some strategy.

For one thing, it would take some prep work. The house would need to be clean enough that I wouldn’t feel like I should be doing housework, so the staycation would be preceded by a day or so of good cleaning. I’d also want to prepare some food in advance. I might go out for breakfast one or two days (since we do have some good breakfast spots I’ve been wanting to try), but I might make some waffles to throw into the toaster and have a pretend hotel breakfast buffet, and I’d want some ingredients for a lunch to pack for a picnic, maybe some special treats to enjoy in the evening.

Then it would take planning and even scheduling to make sure I do stuff instead of just hanging around and goofing off. Fortunately, I live in a tourist attraction kind of place, so it’s very easy to play tourist locally just by walking around town. There’s even more stuff to see within an hour of driving. I think on my hypothetical vacation, I’d start with a day trip so that coming home could feel like checking into a hotel (I might even put a chocolate on my pillow and fold the toilet paper end into a little triangle). Then walk downtown to go out to dinner. The next day would be an active day, taking a picnic and going on a hike in the park or doing some kind of local sightseeing, with a relaxing evening. I’d try to schedule the relaxation to make sure I do it — actually watch the movie or read the book and do the spa treatments. Maybe a less intense day of just sitting on the deck or porch and reading. And then a short day trip to give the sense of leaving and coming back home with the “hotel” becoming a house once more, but with a relaxing evening to unwind from the whole thing. I might try limiting online time so I can do things that are fun but not get into the mindset of work.

I’ll have to see where I can fit that in this fall, since I’ve scheduled for a light month and I’ll be wanting to hit the usual places to see the autumn colors. One of my day trips can be heading into the mountains, then there’s a park nearby with interesting rock formations that I’ve been wanting to visit. I’ll just need to find a stretch of time with the right weather for it. I want to try to do several consecutive days instead of grabbing a day here and there so that I can properly unwind. I’ve read research that says it takes about three days of a change of the usual pace before you actually start to reset.

Of course, I can’t really turn my brain off. It’ll be playing with story ideas, but that’s part of what I do for fun. I’d probably come out of this with several new ideas or with something I’ve been working on entirely replotted.

I’ve had a busy few days and am now in introvert recharge mode.

Friday through Sunday was the church and choir retreat. We go to this retreat center in the mountains that used to be a Victorian spa town. There are these huge old hotel buildings that look like something out of Somewhere in Time, plus little cottages. When the spa went out of business early in the 20th century, the Episcopal church bought it and has been adding on to it. We had three days of huge meals together in the dining hall, choir rehearsals, hiking, a church service in the outdoor church (I think it’s now officially designated as a cathedral shrine), and the Saturday-night entertainment was an 80s dance party. Though there were a few of us older folks who remember the 80s, it was the teenagers and college kids who were really into it. They knew all the words to all the songs. It was a teenager who was DJing, using music from his phone. That would have been like my peers knowing all the Glenn Miller music. I did because I was a weird kid, but we didn’t have 40s dance parties and sing along to all the music. I found an old dress I had from high school, and since it fit, I wore authentic 80s attire. It was funny how different my real 80s clothes looked from the costumes others had put together.

I got home Sunday afternoon and collapsed, but then I had to get up and out again because I was volunteering for an event. There’s a community garden that a group of sisters got started. Their main goal is to provide fresh, healthy food to people who might not be able to afford it, and they deliver to seniors and families with children. But they fund this by also selling produce at a market stand. The market is about a 10-minute walk away, so I go on most weekends during the season to buy whatever they have and see what I can make with it.

Meanwhile, there’s a bakery/restaurant building just down the hill from my house. The back of it would be across the street from me if the ground were flat, but there’s essentially a cliff. Apparently, it was a really good bakery, but it closed during the pandemic and has been empty the whole time I’ve lived here. Recently, the owner donated the building to the community garden, and they’re going to turn it into a kind of cafe/bakery/grocery/community center, where they’ll have cooking classes and educational seminars in addition to serving food and selling produce and groceries. Monday night was the initial fundraiser to get this started, a farm-to-table throwdown. Area farmers donated ingredients, then some of the top chefs in the area had to create dishes using these ingredients. Three did appetizers, three did entrees, and three did desserts. A panel of judges evaluated the dishes and picked winners. The tickets for the dinner sold out almost instantly (and they were expensive). Since I’m in favor of having a restaurant a block away (since there’s no chair lift, so I have to walk down the street and back down the next street), I volunteered for the event.

They had an interesting setup for carrying out each flight of dishes. There were these thin boards that they piped dots of icing onto. The servers would pick up a board and go to each station in the kitchen, where someone would press a small plate onto the icing (so the plates wouldn’t slide). Then we’d carry the board out and set it in front of a diner, then hurry back to get another one. We had about 30 servers doing this, most of them high school students but a few adults. I pretty much spent the evening running laps. We’d go until everyone was served, get a brief break, during which we got to eat any food the chefs had left, then we’d run bring in the boards (which went faster than serving because we could stack them), and then it was time for the next course. In between courses, the chefs went out and described their dishes.

It was a lot of work and my feet and knees were mad at me by the end of the evening, but it was a lot of fun. I knew a number of the volunteers, either from other events in town or from running into them and chatting at the garden market. My next-door and across-the-street neighbors were there as diners, and one of my neighbors was doing logistics and hauling things in his truck. The guy two doors down was part of one chef’s team, and one of the pastry chefs has his bakery in the neighborhood. It was nice seeing everyone come together. One of the entree chefs was running behind getting her dish plated, and one of the pastry chefs pitched in to help. There were teenagers from the volunteer group getting drafted to help the chefs (I think the organizers knew them and knew they were interested in restaurant work). I met a lot of interesting people. One of the women I was working with turned out to have lived in the same general area of Germany I did when her husband was stationed there (he worked at the hospital where I went to the doctor when we lived there).

I mostly didn’t get to try the full dishes as they were plated, so I couldn’t really judge anything other than the desserts, where I did get a full plate of all three (another volunteer and I split it, but we got all the sauces and toppings the way it was plated for the dinner). My favorite was a goat cheese cheesecake. It wasn’t too sweet and had just a bit of tang.

The event was in the high school cafeteria (with lots of decoration to make it look like a restaurant), and during the down time between training and the event, I explored a little. I peeked into the auditorium and saw that the drama club was rehearsing a stage production of Hogfather, based on the Terry Pratchett novel. I’ll have to go see that. Based on the bit of rehearsal I saw, I think they’re having fun with it.

I enjoy being around people like that and feel energized while I’m doing it, but it also drains my batteries quickly, and I need solitude to recharge. I was only partially recharged from the retreat before I had to go into public mode again at the dinner, but I have a few days of quiet before next weekend’s fun kicks in. I’ve got a couple of hikes on the agenda, but there’s also a big local festival. I didn’t sign up to volunteer for the festival this year, so I may just pop by, depending on how tired I am after the hiking.

Remember that Pottery & Peril comes out tomorrow! I hope you enjoy it.

We had a glorious fall-like day yesterday, so I packed a lunch in my backpack and headed to the city park down the street. We have two main city parks (plus a lot of smaller pocket parks). There’s a very manicured one that has a duck pond, playgrounds, the bandstand, a fishing lake, and sports fields. But it doesn’t have walking paths. There’s a road winding through the park that at one time was a carriage path. Now that’s a multipurpose road, which cars, bikes, and walkers all have to share. When I lived in the apartment, that park was close by, and I initially thought I wanted to live in easy walking distance of it. Then I learned that the concerts there get loud and it’s annoying having to dodge cars on the walking path. It’s about a 20-minute walk from my house, so I can still go there for concerts and events.

The other big park is a bit wilder. It has a swimming pool, various sports courts, a few playgrounds, and sports fields, but the big hill in the middle of it has been left mostly forested, with walking paths—real hiking-type paths—winding around the hill. It’s about a 10-minute walk from my house, so I can very easily get to an experience that feels wilderness-like. You can forget you’re in a city. It feels almost the same as being on the Appalachian Trail, though it’s much, much shorter and has a lower risk of bears (since they’d have to go through the city to get there). You can also get the good kind of lost.

I forgot where I read it, but there’s apparently some benefit to your mind from getting mildly lost—not to the point of needing a rescue crew, but going through some time of not being exactly certain where you are or not heading for a particular destination. It does something to spur creativity and problem solving. This park is perfect for that. The trails are marked, but the markings aren’t always clear, there are trail spurs that aren’t marked, and the trails intersect with each other, so you may find yourself on a different trail, with the markers far enough apart that you don’t realize you’re on a different trail. The trail map on the website is fairly vague. It is very easy to get on these trails and not be entirely certain exactly where you are within the park. At the same time, it’s impossible to get truly lost. If you stay on a trail, it will eventually come out at a parking area, a sports field, or a picnic area, though it may not be the one you were aiming for. You might walk a bit longer than you planned, but the longest trail is only a little more than two miles. It’s a great place to just wander and feel lost while knowing that you’re not really lost.

The getting a bit lost thing is only bad when you’re aiming for the picnic area at the top of the hill and you’re starving for lunch, but you made a wrong turn and realize you’re heading away from the picnic area instead of toward it, so you end up walking about 20 minutes longer than you planned before you stop for lunch. Not that I have any experience with this. Ahem.

I do have to say, though, that the getting lost definitely seems to help with creativity and brainpower. Figuring out where you are, where you went wrong, and how to fix it is like solving a puzzle.

Now that the weather’s cooling off, I need to do this more often. I can take a notebook and do brainstorming and planning while I eat lunch. It’s great exercise. And I enjoy watching the way the forest changes with the seasons. When I was house hunting, I didn’t consider trying to look for a house close to this park, but I think I ended up with the best of all possible worlds. I can walk to the “nice” park for events. I can walk to downtown. If I just want to walk for exercise, there’s the cemetery across the street. And if I want to go for a hike without driving half an hour to the Appalachian Trail, I can walk ten minutes to this park. I may even start making a point of scheduling these outings, picking the best day of the week based on schedule and weather and planning around it.

I’ve found some groups for more serious hikes, and I’m trying to do more of that, as well, since the outdoors opportunities are a big reason why I wanted to move here. Instead of having to drive 3 hours to get to Oklahoma mountains, I can drive half an hour in either direction and be in more serious mountains.