Autumn Rocks

Fall's coming, I can feel it.

I always know when Autumn is around the corner when the wind starts to nip my fingers and ears, and this morning, bright and early, it nipped. Autumn is coming, with Winter soon on its heels, and when it comes it will never be, to my mind, too late. I guess I never want Summer to end. Who does, right?

But having my birthday right bang in the middle of the Autumn Equinox is kinda cool, I think, as it signals a change in the seasons, a new beginning. Hasn't always been so. At first, for the past two years, I thought of it as depressing for my birthday to annually be the necessary herald of the stark frozen winter days to come, but now I think of it coming, not at the end of summer, but at the beginning of fall. The beginning of the most beautiful and colourfully awesome time of the year, when the leaves turn gold and yellow and orange in a bright rage of mature defiance. Not languishing for a raw spring or a green summer that's come and gone too quickly, but rejoicing in the rich, triumphant kaleidoscope which the passing seasons have brought quietly on.

All this is sort of like me at my time of life: the now-quiet, more-pensive, mellowed-down, middle-aged (!) thirtysomething Me I never thought I'd be. But truly, given a choice, I'd much rather be 36 than 16 or 26. So I'm determined to enjoy this stage of my life and revel in it, rejoice in it, embrace it, cherish it while it's here. Like everything around us, it too is fleeting.

Autumn rocks. I love it. It's so me.