It’s Autumn soon, (on the 22nd September). It’s incredibly stereotypical to love this time of year, but I do. Maybe that’s something inherent in humanity, maybe something about the temperatures, or the foliage or the fact that we’re getting more sleep as the darkness encroaches on our schedule makes us feel a bit more alive.
Maybe it’s more societal. The summer harvest is in, the big growing season is over and now we sit back and relax for a few weeks before the weather begins and makes everything just a tad more strenuous. Maybe, due to our agricultural heritage, we’ve made the school and academic years begin in Autumn (to let the kids help with the harvest). Maybe it’s because coffee shops great and small, both the lumbering giant franchises and the sickening quaint local stores, have convinced the population that they need their seasonal fix of pumpkin spice or whatever it is. Maybe it’s that everyone is kind of tired of forcing their recreation backlog into the summer, when they’re supposed to be active, and now have the excuse as the nights draw in to just lump themselves in their caves with loved ones.
Whatever it is, I don’t care. I love the autumn. I’ve always associated it with new growth, which is weird because what follows is the winter and everything is dormant. The habits I start to form in this season, the seeds I plant now, always yield the most in the years to come. It was autumn that I convinced myself to try out strength training (and look where that got me), it was conversations in the autumn that lead me to picking up Marx, and Federici, and start engaging with philosophy.
Already I can feel stirrings in my body as I desire to enter a new period of growth and change. I’m not sure where it’ll lead me, what seeds I’ll plant. I’ll scatter as many as possible and see what grows.