Unhinged Squirrel Energy
Pre-hibernation vibes.
My 2026 calendars are currently at the printer—preorder one now to make sure you’re among the first to get them. // The fall session of DIVE writing group starts this month, sign up for a season of monthly writing sessions and weekly prompts with
.Hello friends,
Sitting in my parents’ yard the other day, we watched a squirrel sprint from a tree and into the garden, shaking all of the tomato plants as he rushed underneath, before bolting up another trunk. Honestly, it looked like he had one too many drinks.
The were also the four or five squirrels that I saw run across the highway last weekend as I was driving home. Busy thoroughfares where I had never seen a squirrel attempt to cross before. But these ones? They didn’t give a shit. They just leapt right across, clearly on a mission fueled by the kind of tunnel vision that erases any sense of risk.
Then there were the assorted holes that showed up in the potted plants on the deck. Very clearly made from the top down, dirt pushed to the side as someone trying to dig a place to store their winter stash. One day I found a scattering of empty maple seed pods left on the edge of the planter box, a clear giveaway of the culprit.
The squirrel that resides around our house (and sometimes in) has been causing all kinds of ruckus, sprinting up and down trees with a kind of frenetic energy that feels palpable from just a few feet away.
“Unhinged squirrel energy” is what I’ve been calling it.
We humans are carrying this energy as well. Every conversation I’ve had in the past few weeks has amounted to some kind of sense of chaos, largely manifesting as disconnection and disjointedness. There’s too much—too much news, too much politics, too much personal stuff—to feel like we can get ahold of the situation. We’re left feeling fragmented. We look at each other, shrug our shoulders, find solace in knowing at the very least we’re not alone.
I can only assume that the squirrels are running around with this particular energy because they’re preparing for the colder months. It’s not unhinged, it’s just their last hurrah. What they need to do in order to get things done, settle in for the winter.
Like them, we’re frantically trying to gather up all of our own loose ends, find somewhere to put everything. Mostly just feeling like we’ve filled up every possible empty vessel, and there’s no additional one to stash all the rest of what we’re carrying.
It’s all a race against time. Summer energy wore off ages ago, inklings of hibernation mode have already kicked in. There is a slowness that doesn’t evaporate, even with strong morning coffee. It’s dark by 7pm. You look at the clock and think, “surely it’s bedtime, right?”
It’s not only on account of the season. Uncertainty drives a sense of urgency. A feeling that you have to figure out how to put enough things in place in order to make you feel like maybe you can weather whatever will come next. You grip, you tighten, you force. Which you know perfectly well is no way to weather a storm.
The tendency is to attempt to combat this energy with some kind of structure. We diligently commit to getting a grip on the situation—we can organize our way out of it! A better way of managing our to-do list certainly must be able to help, right? If we feel disjointed, pulled in too many directions—with too many ideas, projects, and feelings scattered every which way—this must be a personal problem, something we should be able to fix? Yes yes, definitely fixable. In which case, we are just one productivity hack, one better organizing system, one solid to-do list, away from feeling better.
Maybe it’s more useful to, oh I don’t know… not?
The chaos cannot always be organized. Sometimes, dropping the balls feels fall more cathartic than strategically keeping them all in the air.
Eventually, the squirrel gives up. Or at least, in my mind he does. Because he knows that not every seed can be gathered. Some will be left. Some nooks and crannies will go unfilled. That is simply the way of things.
The question to ask is not how you figure out how to tie up all the loose ends, how you organize the chaos. Because the real questions are far more complicated.
How do you find a way to settle in the midst of the chaos?
How do you get comfortable with leaving some things undone?
-Anna
If you too are feeling a bit of Unhinged Squirrel Energy and need to find a way to settle, at least for a few moments, might I recommend doing the October creative prompts?
Anyone who feels like their creative process is more “scraps of paper” than “organized systems” can take solace in Walt Whitman. Sometimes we need the fragments.
I feel like everyone else listened to this Brian Eno interview months ago. But hey, sometimes you’re late to the game and the wisdom you need arrives at exactly the right moment.
DIVE Writing Group: FALL 2025 Session
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“Unhinged Squirrel” is good. I’ve been calling it “end of season burnout frazzle.” Same energy though, manic exhaustion. And there’s no escaping it this year, it’s 90 degrees here and the garden is sad. The fall wants to come, you feel it in morning and evening, in monarchs and spiders, but come on. I’m ready for tea and a fire and assurance of democracy.
I'm gently requesting an "unhinged squirrel energy" sticker, please. Also, those licorice ferns are stunning! Reminders of hope and resilience on every tree stump.