Quiet October

By Kristi Cruise

October has been quiet. Not the kind of quiet that feels empty—just the kind that doesn’t buzz on the surface. All the humming has been inside, beneath the hood, in closed circles and private spaces. I find myself—and my swirling head of endless ideas—in a state of incubation. I feel deep healing. I sleep hard, dream hard, and have started keeping a journal of every dream, each one more revealing than the last. It’s quite possible I’ve cracked a code for sleep self-therapy. I used to go to bed to reset; now most nights feel like an eight-hour existential therapy session… in the best way.

Since my birthday, I haven’t gone silent so much as inward. I’ve been polishing, refining, tending to the ideas already in flight. It’s a different kind of motion—slower, steadier—like the mind sanding down the edges of something that’s finally starting to shine.

And I’m tired. But it’s a good tired. The kind that follows deep work. The extrovert in me feels guilty that the labor is invisible, that the growth isn’t public yet—but it’s not quite time to share. Still incubating.

It’s easy to mistake visibility for progress, but this month reminded me that growth doesn’t always announce itself. Some of the most important shifts happen quietly—offline, unseen—in the background code of a dream, the tightening of a paragraph, the quiet decisions that change everything.

Maybe that’s what October was for: to remind me that even in stillness, I am still moving. The work is still breathing. And sometimes, polishing what already exists is its own form of creation. And sunsets. Mountain, birthday, not-enough-sunsets.  

I know things will change soon—maybe too much, maybe too fast. But I’ll be ready. Waiting. And excited to tell you all about it.