Time

And the fall season is upon us once again. Hah, i am pretty sure that simple sentence is written as the intro to many many pieces of literature in the months of September and October of every year.

Regardless, it is true and i will not be the one to end some long standing tradition. I will just add my part.

The days are getting shorter, the feeling is that time is running faster, and everyone, it seems, is getting busier. Gone are the short Fridays of yester-season. Instead of walking out of the office in the mid afternoon with the sun pulling me to patios, Fridays find themselves dragging on till 5:00 or later, and the sky seems darker and grayer then it should. That seems unfair as i write it, i should clarify that Fridays are never bad in my world, no matter how dark they are.

It is a time of self evaluation, these autumn months. The changing seasons reminds us of all the change around us. The summers start off with the promise; It was going to be the best summer ever. The window of opportunity is wide open and we promise to get so much done. And we do. Nights of martini's, baseball games, and live music fill the summer months. Weekends of water rafting, beaches and hiking keep us busy. We worry about things less. An extra few hundred dollars here, a few more drinks there. It adds up.

September comes, we look around ourselves, am i standing in the same place? Has no distance from march till now been traversed? well, except a few extra pounds around the waist, and a few less pounds in the bank. We ask whether the decisions of spring have led us to where we wanted to be, or have we slid back and lost our way since the resolutions of the year before.

We end relationships in the fall months, we work harder, put our shoulders to the grind stone. We begin our preparations for hibernation from a time of fun, and rest in a time of work. Its almost like a defense from the cold months of winter. If we just put our head down, work hard at what we want, then by next summer, we will have made it and we can rest again. Forget that we blew it all away this summer again.

But did we really, my first thought is that i didn't do anything this summer, not near enough anyways, and that i have in many ways fell backwards in the race we call life. But memories are a deceiving thing, and time is very good at hiding many of them behind a veil of gray. We have to be careful with them and not take them at face value.

it was Descartes that proposed most famously that our memories, dreams and senses have deceived us, and so therefore should be assumed to deceive us when think with rational arguments. Another way to the truth must be found.

So i look at writings, and the calendar, i look at tangible things hold within them proofs of the past summer. The trampoline in the back yard, the foam hands from the baseball games. The photos from multiple hiking trips. The fact that my roomates now numbers 3 instead of 4. Heck, there was a whole month i spent with an X-girlfriend that was very enjoyable at the time, but i couldn't make work.

So then why the feeling of stagnation as another september rolls on by? Not really sure. But i do see it everywhere. Could be the cold, the weather, the fact that for years it meant the start of school, and now without that i left with a sense of no direction.

Whatever the reasons, it does not matter, the truth is, as shown by the hard facts, is that i did live this summer, and i did have fun. If i missed something, then that is fine, i just have to pick it up now, if i gained something i didn't want, then the time to loose it is now. And with a free conscious i must dive into the future, as i do every season.

It will be a good fall, the best fall yet. And whether it really is or not doesn't matter, because it is the current fall, and its the only one we have right now.

Until Victory
Cray