Autumn Anticipation and Summer Recap

For those of us on the east coast of the US, autumn technically begins at 11:09 pm this evening. (The equinox is at 0309 hours UT on September 23; eastern daylight time is UT minus four hours, putting the equinox at 11:09 pm September 22.) I look forward to the fall every year. I look better in fall clothes. I like the 'settling down' feeling everything gets. And midway through the fall is my favorite holiday, Halloween-Samhain. I usually take a few days off around that time and simply chill out.

This summer has been tumultuous. Some of the changes have been good, some have been bad, and some I will feel the implications of for years.

At the beginning of the summer I hung out with few friends. I have begun to do my part to repair some damaged relationships and not only get out of my apartment more, but also get out to actually meet other people. I enter the fall on an improving trend in socializing.

We started the summer frantically trying to figure out what was wrong with Mom's health, and we're ending it with her in rehab recovering from heart valve replacement surgery. In the middle of the summer (literally the middle, since I spent Lammas there) I went to Alabama to visit with my parents for a week. I gained some insights into my family's dynamics, and a new appraisal of my father.

Over the course of the summer I realized I am agnostic, and I left off all pretensions of faith. I simply put aside any attempt at active belief or disbelief, and realized that not only will I not receive answers by divine revelation or insights, but also that I have far more responsibility for my life than I am comfortable with. I reckon I will do well to become accustomed to the discomfort.

One giant honking FAIL this summer: I dropped the ball on initiating an exercise regimen, and on getting my weight down. Surely these are the big projects of the fall.

Finally, I like to note one ten-second moment of awesome that occurred this summer: as I was walking home from the Metro station one weekday evening, I was passed by a runner, a tattooed Asian male, a total mesomorph, zipping past almost silently in his Vibram Five-Fingers footwear. In a word, he encapsulated the athletic and graceful potential of the season. Beautiful.