Harvest

Have I told you how productive this time of year is for me? Maybe productive is the wrong word. Spirited is better, but still not quite right. It’s a time of harvest. Harvesting what had been sown (often without my knowing) throughout the year. I started writing See You in the Cosmos on a day like this in November, and some of my most life-shaping trips I’d first started planning in the fall. Something curious, surprising, and hindsightly obvious this year: I’ve been looking more seriously into buying a house.

We’ll see. November’s also the month of my birthday, and there’s still a kind of time pressure from my twenties that I can’t quite shake, like the muscle memory of weekends. I tell myself: I’m going to be, officially, another year older; better get as much done as I can before then. (I’d better, also, get as much done before the end of the calendar year.)

These markers are somewhat arbitrary, yes, but the seasons are not, and daylight has no concept of accounting. I wake more or less when it’s bright out, and I’m writing this morning (now afternoon) with the blinds open because the sun no longer shines directly into my windows at this hour. The ground outside is spotted with dried yellow leaves, fallen from the two large maples that hold court over the apartment building. I’m very close to finishing a first full, rough pass, of the new book that I’ve codenamed GRACE.

Time for lunch now. Then it’s off to the library, and to run some errands. I have a full day/week/month/rest-of-the-year ahead.