Indian Summer

Indian summer is in full effect here in the Monterey area and I really don't like it much. Some people here love the unseasonably warm weather and welcome the chance to enjoy an extended summer. Being the fragile little Pisces that I am, I'm really very sensitive to heat, so I have to worry about problems like heat stroke. Especially since like most households around here, ours doesn't have air conditioning.

Thankfully, Seth is the type of guy that insists on doing anything he can to make me as comfortable as possible. Within the past week or so, two of the fans we depend on to stay cool when it's warm decided to kick the bucket. We tried to order a replacement in time for it to get here before the heat wave started, but there was some problem with the order on the vendor's end and it was unexpectedly cancelled.

Yesterday, Seth actually wound up walking five miles and visiting three different stores to get us a new fan so that we wouldn't fry to death. I'm really grateful that he did, too, because having this new fan in here today has made a massive difference. It's been warm, but I haven't even broken a sweat despite the temps being up in the 90's somewhere for most of the day. Thankfully, I didn't have any deadlines today, so I was also able to just kind of forget about work for a change and just vegetate.

At the Threshold of the Fall Equinox

Tomorrow is the equinox, so I guess it will officially be fall at long last. I can't even express how happy that makes me. It's time for cooler weather and nice, long nights. It's time to read Dracula and watch horror movies. It's time for big steaming homemade bowls of stew, and soup, and chili.

Then it will be time for the holidays. Last year, I think I felt like I'd finally made them my own. Not what my family, or my ex-partners, or society thought they should be, but what I felt they should be. It turned out the right approach combines religion with the same fun, cozy traditions Seth and I have developed by ourselves over the years. I am really looking forward to doing that again. My holiday season felt like it had a lot of meaning on more different levels than usual and that's something that's been missing.

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I decided I'm not really going to bother with my high school reunion in October. The main reason is the tickets were prohibitively expensive -- for me with my limited income, anyway -- and I just couldn't justify spending almost $200 for Seth and I to attend something I'm not even sure I care that much about. However, I also really don't think I feel like wasting an entire weekend socializing with people I'm not even close to just so I can say that I did it. As nice as it was to see some of the old peeps at Robert's funeral, the introverted Pisces that I am still kind of couldn't wait to leave. An hour or two of forced social interaction is about all I can realistically expect out of myself these days.

On Emotional Honesty, Priorities, and Being True to One's Self

It always seems that the more I have on the agenda for work on a given day, the more I actually feel like writing something of my own instead. A blog entry, usually, or a bunch of shorter social media updates... but occasionally a snippet of a longer story, a piece of flash fiction, or a poem. Usually, I react to those thoughts the way I was taught to -- by telling myself I need to get "the important stuff" out of the way first and then if I have time later on, I can spend what's left of my energy doing things I actually want to do.

The trouble with that approach to writing is that nothing expressive or passionate ever actually gets written. There's always something else to do that "needs" to get done or that society would label as more important. By the time I get to the point in my day when I'm out of things to do, it's the wee hours of the morning and I'm exhausted, not only physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. The last thing I want to do at that point is write some more.

In fact, I'm constantly wondering if maybe that "work first, play later" is actually the wrong approach. For me, anyway. It certainly feels like the wrong one. One of these days, maybe I'll learn that it's OK to be someone that makes decisions based on how they feel and not how good they look on paper or how many of the right people sign off on them. When I just allow myself to give the first hour or two of my writing day to something that I'd actually like to write, I don't resent having to work as much as I normally do. I resent the need to earn money less, since it no longer encroaches upon my self expression.