This time of year, I feel like a squirrel when winter doth approach. Most of the summer, I’m pretty content to take it easy. Most nights I go home after work, putter about the house, mow the lawn, maybe take a bike ride, throw something on the grill, watch the sun go down. Pleasant, but not particularly memorable. That’s single life in Suburbia for you. But once the days start getting shorter and we get the first clean, non-humid Canadian air dropping down, my mental state changes. I become depressed and it beomes clear to me that I Have Wasted My Summer and I must Do Stuff. Now.
In some ways, this is a good thing, because I do a lot of kayaking and hiking and just getting out in general. In other ways, it's just damn exhausting and frankly unsettling, because it's unpleasant to be continually asking myself, "Am I making the best possible use of the fading days?"
I assume that this is some genetic thing. We no longer have to worry about stocking up on nuts and berries for the long winter, but my genes don't know this. So what I try to stock up on is memorable experiences instead. Or it could just be that I'm hearkening back 35 or so years to the existential dread of yet another school year.
So does anyone else go through this? How does the shortening of the days affect you?
There’s a sense of time being limited, it’s harvest, everything’s beautiful, find someone now for snuggling with in the winter to come…autumn is definitely for lovers!
Anyway, love the fall, early winter, winter, get sick of it about March.