A Change in the Season — Suzey Ingold

The leaves are starting to turn. The maple tree across the road is a crisp, burnt orange; the rowan outside my window is caught somewhere between its summer green and a fresh yellow. The squirrel has been digging into his winter supplies and sends leaves spiralling to the ground when he flings himself from the rooftop into the branches.

A kind of relief came over me as the first days of autumn began, as the humid dregs of summer waned and I reached once more for my boots and warm sweaters. The summer was long and did not go much to plan. I had set myself a few goals for the season, as I do every quarter. Unlike the first half of the year, I had barely even touched upon those I had for the summer.

I had expected the summer to be busy, but not in the way it ended up being. I had planned to recoup some savings, working full-time through the week at one job, and picking up some extra hours at community vaccine clinics on the weekends. I expected to meet friends for drinks on patios under the illustrious Toronto golden hour and complain bitterly about the heat in my apartment.

Things changed. An unexpected health scare in the family, that thankfully resolved itself far quicker than I had feared it might, brought me home to Scotland. With one less job, I was back to being paycheque to paycheque, and managing the burden of working at a time offset of five hours with family all around. My screenplay fell to the wayside once again and the words I’d started getting down on my new novel trickled off.

Well, I thought, turning the page on it. Nothing to be done about that, now.

The end of the summer also brought the end of both of my jobs, as the festival wrapped up and the clinics closed their doors. For the first time in a few years, I was at a loose end – that is, a loose end not caused by a global crisis.

For a while, it was perfectly acceptable for me to be at a loose end. When I lost my job in spring 2020, there wasn’t a lot of expectation that I could find another one right away, given that I couldn’t go further than the grocery store at the end of the block.

But life has changed, quite significantly, in the past few months. Life feels – dare I say it? – normal. Aside from the steady supply of masks I spend my life wearing and washing, the city has settled into a rhythm that is familiar of the before times. I can pop into a shop, just for a browse. I can grab dinner with a friend, inside. I can go to the cinema. I can cook Thanksgiving dinner for my friends.

And it’s wonderful and familiar and comforting. It does mean, however, that Trudeau is no longer footing me a cheque twice a month to cover my expenses.

As the evenings grew darker, and the autumnal chill set in, I found myself sleeping a lot. Recuperating energy from the past two years, perhaps. Trying to ignore the voice in my head screaming, what are you going to do now? probably.

Sometimes, I wish I had become an astronaut. Or a teacher. Or a doctor. Or anything that had set me out on a clear path of knowing where I was trying to go next. A path that took me through education into a job, into a career, where growth and challenge were in natural incline.

Hey, kid? Do me a favour and get really into sciences, instead.

Instead, I have a smörgåsbord of work experience that just about shares a common thread, if you squint, and a pay grade that never seems to be able to get to the next threshold. I’m told I’m overqualified for one job, but lack experience for the next. Half the time I don’t even know what job to search for because I don’t know what I want.

“Take money out of it,” someone said to me recently. “What would you do next?”

“I’d write. I’d do film festivals. I’d travel.”

Admittedly, it didn’t sound unlike my life as it stands (if you ignore the pandemic of it all). The trouble is, the lifestyle I have isn’t sustainable unless I score an incredibly lucrative book deal in the next, say, three months.

(And I’ve already been saying that for a couple of years).

The last week has been stagnant, an oppressive humidity clinging to the grey, overcast skies. I feel it, deep into my bones, stuck between where I am and where I want to be. Between projects that seem to be piling up around me. Between what I need and what I want.

I worked remotely out of my brother’s house for a week during the summer. He glanced over as I fired off a dozen emails to filmmakers across the world.

“Hey, it’s almost like you have a career,” he joked.

And he was – joking, that is. It’s not his fault that it’s the same thing I say to myself deprecatingly on a regular basis.

What’s it called when you’ve already had your quarter-life crisis but then you have another one? I suppose that’s just being an adult. As autumn sets in, I try to hold to the fact that I am still in the early, bright summer of my life, although it rarely feels like it. I don’t know what’s next – I rarely seem to. For now, I guess I’ll just keep throwing mud at a wall to see what sticks – and trying to keep it together in the meantime.