'Tis the Season

I turn a bend on a familiar road and I'm greeted with a new sight. Have they removed some trees? Was a building torn down. Then I realize, its the season changing, the leaves are gone and I can see past the trees that have always stood there. My view is different, my perspective shifting. Maybe its a metaphor.

We're moving into a season of cooler temperatures so you bundle more, but its also a season of necessary family occasions so you spend more time greeting, talking, exposing yourself, and its a season of change - the New Year, time for renewal, promises of the year to come, motivation to better something, someone. The trees are exposed, bare for all to see, their buds waiting inside to expose themselves in the new year.
I've been stripped down, my leaves have fallen off... I can't hide anything anymore. My boss called me into her office recently, it was obvious how unhappy I was, how hard I was trying. I couldn't hide it. I didn't want to say what we were thankful for at Thanksgiving, I didn't want to cry.

Its time to start looking beyond the trees, what's past them, what's been laying there all this time that I haven't noticed before. I'm open now, I'm stripped down too, what can I share, what can I soak up.
I drive past the new perspective and "hmm" to myself in thought about what I've realized. And it will keep happening, there have been many familiar roads I've driven with new exposed sight lines. It is a metaphor, and I've got to pay attention.

The family started to say what they were thankful at the Thanksgiving table and I couldn't hide it from it, I was sitting right there in sight. I said what I was thankful for and I cried. I went back into my bosses office later that same week and laid it all out- here's what I do, here's what I want more of, and don't bend too much because I'm leaving at the end of March. There is something beyond those trees in the metaphor- a new place for me to see and be a part of. New York City.