The Best Part of Fall Happens After 5 O’Clock

There’s usually a point sometime in September when I walk outside after work and realize the air has finally changed. It’s still warm because this is the South and summer doesn’t exactly pack its bags on Labor Day, but that miserable heat has started backing off a little. There’s still daylight left, the evenings are getting more comfortable, and sitting outside starts sounding good again.

I think this might be one of the most underrated times of the year.

Summer gets all the attention when we talk about getting outside, but summer also comes with afternoons so hot that opening the front door feels like a bad decision. Early fall is different. You can get home from work, change clothes, grab something cold and actually enjoy being outside for a couple of hours without feeling like you’re melting into the chair.

And the older I get, the more I realize those couple of hours matter.

We Spend Too Much Time Waiting for the Weekend

I’m guilty of this one. It’s easy to spend the whole week thinking about Saturday. We’ll take the boat out Saturday. We’ll go to the river Saturday. We’ll get together with everybody Saturday. We’ll finally sit down and relax Saturday.

Meanwhile, there are four or five perfectly good evenings that we barely notice because we’re busy trying to get through the week.

Not everything worth doing needs a whole Saturday.

Sometimes getting home, kicking off your shoes and sitting outside with the dog for a while is enough. Maybe you throw something on the grill. Maybe somebody stops by and ends up staying longer than they planned. Maybe you take the long way home because the weather is finally nice enough to roll the windows down.

None of that sounds particularly exciting when you write it on a calendar, but that’s kind of the point. A good life can’t only happen on vacations and weekends.

Knowing When the Workday Is Over

Anybody who knows Southern Stoner® knows we aren’t against hard work. Hell, Work Hard is the first part of the tagline for a reason.

But at some point you have to decide the workday is over. Take your boots off, close the laptop and let whatever didn’t get finished wait until tomorrow. Most of us could keep finding things to work on until bedtime if we wanted to, but that’s not much of a life, and it sure isn’t what we mean when we say Work Hard. Live Easy. Stay Lifted.

I think working people are especially bad about feeling like we always need to be doing something productive. If we sit down for an hour, there’s a little voice reminding us about the laundry, the yard, something that needs fixing or the ten other things we could be getting done.

Sometimes the productive thing can wait.

There’s nothing wrong with sitting on your own porch and enjoying the house you work to pay for.

This Time of Year Makes It Easier

That’s one reason I like this stretch between summer and real fall so much. We still have enough daylight after work to do something with it, but the weather finally starts cooperating.

The river isn’t closed because Labor Day passed. The boat doesn’t know what month it is. The porch certainly doesn’t care.

Even an ordinary weeknight can turn into a pretty good evening when the temperature drops a little and the sunset starts looking like it’s worth sticking around for.

You don’t have to make a production out of it either. Some of my favorite evenings are the ones where nobody really planned anything. You sit down for a few minutes, the dog settles in nearby, somebody grabs another chair and before you know it, it’s dark and you’ve been talking for two hours.

That’s living easy to me.

Leave a Little Something for Your Own Life

I don’t think the answer is to stop working hard. That wouldn’t be us.

The answer is remembering why we’re doing all that work in the first place.

We work to take care of our families, keep a roof over our heads, pay for the things we enjoy and hopefully build a life we actually like living. It doesn’t make much sense to spend so much time building that life that we never stop long enough to enjoy any of it.

So if you walk outside after work this week and notice the air feels a little better, don’t automatically head back inside.

Stay out there for a while.

You’ve probably got something that needs doing. We all do.

It’ll still be there tomorrow.

Work Hard. Live Easy. Stay Lifted.

— Southern Stoner®