I’m still serving myself up seconds, but the seconds are maybe a little smaller, as were the firsts. It’s a practice in A Little Less that I’m taking more seriously, lest my head explode.

I’m not always a fan of summer, but the vibrations that emit from the sun soaked into the skin, the overwhelm of long days, the heat so thick you can bite it– it’s the worthwhile sustain of a season of hard work. As a fellow musician put it to me this year, “It’s our season of making hay.” It was a relief to hear her say it, as it indicated a couple of things. One, that the corn was and could still be high– there was sustenance on the way. And two, that it was only a season. There was an end in sight.

Now, it is past the end of Making Hay. The days here in northern New Hampshire are inching just above sixty, and the nights below forty, and I have worn three of my favorite sweatshirts this week. Last night, for the first time since April, we turned on our heat. My Someone is finishing up the shed in the back to keep our tools out of winter’s destructive descent, and I am beginning bookbinding commissions for Christmas. We have a few shows here and there, but the season of “making hay” has transitioned into Harvest; and there is still work to be done in Harvest– storing up and setting plans, covering those cracks that will inevitably let in the cold, planting our first cherry tree, and overall trying to lower our heart rates. We’ve overcommitted ourselves this season. So, it seems, though it is Harvest, we are still stuck in the season of acceleration.

And so, I am practicing A Little Less. I will not cancel a cocktail hour with some new friends in town, I will let them know that I will be bringing dark chocolate bars instead of the homemade snacks I’d mentioned. I will not make five courses and dessert for our friends for dinner; but I will make a simple, warm chickpea vindaloo and an easy apple blueberry crisp, with apples from just up the way. And I will be thankful for those apples, as the frost killed off most of this year’s New England crop.

It seems even the apples are demanding that I do with just A Little Less.

We will not accept a last minute show, though Lord knows we need the cash this year, as we pass through at a rowdy bar where nobody will listen and the money isn’t worth the weight in time. Scarcity tells me I’m not working hard enough, that we are desperate. A Little Less is telling me I can do without if it means an extra day at home to sort out the work I already have. Even if that means making do with last week’s groceries. A Little Less also just bought me more time by keeping me from the grocery store.

What A Little Less offers, when I can quiet my scarcity panic, isn’t just an exchange of time. It is a letting go of perfection and pretense. The reward for this is presence. Presence of mind to be laughing with a couple of women in the parlor of a Dead & Breakfast instead of still reeling from a flurry of making snacks– and gratefully accepting Esther’s unfathomably good gluten free pumpkin bread. Presence of peace to take a breath before greeting my new friends at the door instead of putting the finishing touches on dinner. Presence of time to spend in this achingly beautiful season with my Someone, cozied up on the front porch with hot apple cider we pressed ourselves with our friends who we didn’t have to cancel with because we decided that it’s okay to have a little less on our schedule. Presence of quality as we quit watching TV on weeknights and find ourselves, instead, engrossed in good work or good books. Presence of patience to work as long and as hard as we can, but to lay it down for tomorrow if we don’t finish it today.

Presence to forgive ourselves and the people around us for taking too much time to do and not enough time to be.

That is to say, what A Little Less offers is A Little More.

I am not ready yet for winter, my favorite season. But when I imagine it, I see long waiting stacks of books being read, cookies being baked, slow mornings where the alarm is not set, a tidy house ready for the season, and somehow magically all of my necessary work to be done tied up. What I know to be true is that loose ends will abound, dust will accumulate with the dog hair, the work of next year will somehow become more pressing than the library book I wanted to finish, and house projects will be halted midway by an unexpected snow– not to resume til the spring.

There will be no time, time, time. Except, maybe, if I start practicing now, here in the Harvest, winter will come as quiet as the snow. A little less time on my screen, on my worries, on my scarcity; a little more on the work at hand, the community I love, the friends I need. Day by day by day.