Fall

Maybe I'm referring to A fall, or THE fall, and not actually autumn here.

It seems that I made all of this fantastic progress in boosting my outlook in the summer.  But now I can feel that thick black moodiness creeping in around the edges of my consciousness.  Nothing's really wrong, but I'm pretty sure I know why it's happening.

I'm effing busy.

I just finished saying to a friend that you should never start a new second job at the same time that you're working on a theatre production at the same time that your main job has three major events happening during the busiest time of the year at the same time that you have to be away for a week for a conference.  The friend I said it to just had a baby, and his tired for sure trumps my tired, but I am confident that his fatigue is at least a tiny bit more rewarding than mine. 

September begins lazily enough.  I'm always waiting for my various commitments to begin when the ninth month clicks over on the calendar.  Soon, it's September 10th or so, and then there's this moment that feels like the shot from a starter pistol that begins my race to December.

So, I'm off.  And I'm running.  And I'm never really sure how this happens to me every autumn, but it does.  This year, though, I know I have a photoessay entitled "Things That Make Me Smile" floating in cyberspace that I can refer to when I feel like things are heading for a fall.  I just have to make time for them.

My birthday is coming up.  My 30th year was pretty great and culminated in a fantastic birthday party.  The six months following my 30th birthday were pretty much the runniest shit there is, in an admittedly first-world-problem kind of way. 

I was listening to the Counting Crows on my last road-trip and the line, "A long December and there's reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last," stuck out for me.

Now, my birthday is in November, and even though November hasn't started yet, it sure feels long.  But I do have a feeling that this year's going to be better than last year, for a lot of reasons.  One of those reasons is that I'm actually going to work at it.  In that spirit, I'm going to set some goals.  Maybe 31 of them, in the spirit of the number of years I've been alive.  Maybe not.  Depends how long November is.