December has made me quieter. Or maybe I made myself quieter without realizing it. Last weekend, I stayed in until Sunday, and it felt…right. Lately, I’ve been choosing to stay where I know, where things feel close and familiar. I’ve lived in Sussex County my whole life, but it’s funny — I never really lived in Sussex County until now. I was always somewhere else, chasing something else. And now? I don’t know if it’s age, circumstances, grief, health, or the fact that life has just been life-ing. But I want to be home. I want to be close to the people I know. I want to feel grounded.
It’s not that I don’t go out. I still do. But I’ve been preferring to go out during the week — when everything is calmer, when it feels more like community and less like chaos. Because for me, going to a bar has never truly been about getting drunk. It’s the conversations. The familiar faces. The people who wave at you because they know the rhythm of your presence. Around here, a bar is one of the only places where community gathers without needing an official reason. People misunderstand that. They turn “going to the bar” into a whole judgment when for some of us, it’s just where connection happens.
And with the seasonal depression creeping in, I’ve been trying not to collapse into my own shell. I’m trying to find balance: the slower spaces I crave and the spaces that keep me from disappearing into myself. That’s why I love my local pub — it’s soft enough, familiar enough, slow enough. And I’m grateful that they’ve trusted me with hosting events there. Because the truth is, you have to meet people where they are. Not everyone wants to go to the library and paint. But they might paint at a pub, where they feel comfortable and can loosen up enough to participate. Community doesn’t always grow in “ideal” spaces — it grows in the spaces people already belong to.
I’m learning to do that with myself, too. To meet myself where I’m at. To accept this weird stage I’m in — not chaotic, not tragic, just…different. A lot of grief in the background. Some health stuff. A lot of thinking. And sometimes that’s all it is: a season of sitting with yourself. A season that feels unfamiliar but not wrong. And maybe the lesson December keeps whispering is that not everything that feels different is a problem. Sometimes it’s just a new room you’ve walked into, one you haven’t learned how to stand in yet.
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