Whenever routines kick up again after summer’s unofficial end, I find it really easy to get caught up in my schedule. A 7:15 wakeup, followed by 45 minutes of eat and get ready time. Bus to school or work. Eat. Come home around 5:30 on the bus. Make dinner. Do readings/assignment. Sleep. Perhaps pepper up the day with a croissant, a run, or a homemade pedicure. I am excited for Christmas holidays, a faraway calendar date. In the meantime, I transition from fall to winter slowly with wool sweaters, fuzzy socks and more frequent teatimes.
The fall sky being perpetually gray as it prepares its own transition to winter reinforces the weekday 9-5 regimen that flows slow like honey but passes by like a blink. The sky acts as they gray backdrop, misty and foggy, that connects one scheduled item to the next with smooth transition.

As school kicks into high gear, especially unforgiving for fourth and final year students as a last brutal hurrah to strain us to wit’s end, I have many projects on the go. I am accustomed to fewer sleep hours to get it all done, which leaves me in a quiet, dreamy state on most days. If I don’t keep busy enough, my thoughts quickly linger to my bed, my plush bed and how warm it feels when I left it that morning.

That is all to say it has become part and parcel of this twentysomething’s routine, to float through each of the 24 hours, occupied with a schedule, with the necessity to cross things off the list. It has become quite easy to notice that a week, a month, has already gone by. As dreadfully boring as my day may seem, it has become a comfort zone. My default is my flannel pajama pants, my comforter and my book. I am happy and most comfortable with that.
But every once in awhile, the universe decides to offer me a beautifully sunny day. It photoshops the brightness on my scenery up a few levels, and I notice the different coloured leaves, the still green grass, the yellow school busses. A day like yesterday when I smile and dance through my run, wave to every single person I pass, and run further than planned so I can look at the pink sky’s reflection on the still canal a little bit longer. Those days wake me up out of my comfort zone and remind me to seize each day.

It is easy to forego a night with casual friends playing Super Nintendo in lieu of a night in a duvet with my book. But then, I can do that when I’m old, right? I could do my interviews over the phone, sitting at my kitchen table smelling the baking muffins, wearing my slippers. But then I could also go outside in the crisp cool air that turns my cheeks pink, meet the person I am to interview, and look into their eyes to see who they are. It is definitely easier to stay in my comfort zone, and I don’t doubt that I’d be quite happy there. But after a day like yesterday that starts off with a surprise visit from an erratic squirrel on my front step, followed by a beautiful run that evening, I am not ready to concede to my comfort zone.
So to spite the gray sky and the warm bed and the monotony of my schedule that call me to give in to the ease of a comfort zone, I decidedly skip down my cubicle hallways an out into a colourful fall canvas to take imaginary pictures and play.