Category: observations/thoughts (Page 1 of 15)

I love fall, and I hate it.

I love the weather, but I hate that I can’t always enjoy it.

Fall is busy. It’s the new school year, it’s making lunches again, it’s three birthdays in our family, it’s letters of recommendation and summer homework that needs grading. It’s always getting started on the wrong foot. It’s crisp mornings and warm afternoons, and evenings that start earlier. My walks shift from mornings to after dinner.

Fall is a shifting season.

I like the idea of fall. I hate the reality of it.

I wish my falls could be like what we see in commercials. The cozy apple orchard, pumpkins, sweateriness, the hot tea and reading under blankets, the hay rides and bonfires. I literally went to a hay ride and bonfire a week ago, and still, I cannot enjoy it. I cannot let go of all the ways my summer life has been upended, and how I haven’t yet adjusted.

Fall shifts us from summer to winter, and on some level, I love that shift. I really like winter! I really like summer too, but most of all, I like how I get to enjoy both, and I like the shift from one to the next. I adore seasons.

But the other shift in fall–the harder shift–is the shift into all this busy-ness. It should be the opposite–shifting from summer to winter should be a shift FROM busy TO restful. Instead, the shift is seismic. I lose my balance. I falter.

Spring shifts us too, but that’s a springboard shift. A leap into summer. A welcome shift where the end of the school year is in sight.

I love fall, but I also hate it. I resent it, I suppose. I resent that what I wish it could be is not what it is.

The shift is happening TO me, not the other way around. If I could do the shifting, if I could be in control, then the turn from summer to winter would be beautiful.

But I’m not in control. The shift is happening TO me. I am buffeted about and pulled in a thousand directions. I am the leaf that falls and gets blown hither and yon.

Just as I was thinking all this, an email from Cal Newport hit my inbox in which he mentions the Gen Z trend to “lock in” for the remainder of 2025. This “locking in” is about focusing hard for the next three months to finish 2025 strong and get something done that doesn’t involve doomscrolling or wasting time on TikTok.

Newport then links to his Youtube video where he lays out a plan for using the last four months of the year to “reinvent your life.”

Shifts.

Gen Z’s locking in, Newport’s reinvention plan–these are ways of shifting, of taking control of fall and using the season to move into something better. The shift of fall means change, but Newport’s idea is that this change can be positive.

Would it be possible for me to use fall for my own shift? To stop the winds of autumn from blowing me about like a stray brown?

I am not sure.

I like the idea of taking charge, of shifting things in the right direction instead of being shifted into chaos. But how does one take control of the shift when so much is outside my control?

Perhaps this is just September. Perhaps no matter who controls the shift–me or the world–there will be discomfort. There will be chaos.

It is a shift after all. And I can’t help that it’s a shift into more–more responsibilities, more work, more things on my plate. I can fight the shift, cry about the shift, accept the shift, or ride the shift. I can take more control, but I can’t stop the onrush of birthdays and lunches and grading and earlier mornings. Some things are inevitable. The seasons change.

And I do like the changing of seasons.

I like fall.

There’s a certain glow to the sunlight in September, in early October. There’s a lovely dryness right now, where it’s warm but I can still wear a long-sleeved shirt, and the sun is bright but not intense. There’s a gentleness to the weather. A mildness.

A strange contrast to the hectic day-to-day of tasks and responsibilities.

Maybe I don’t have to like all the chaos and busyness of fall, but I can still enjoy the crisp mornings and the fresh apples and the hay rides. Maybe I can reinvent myself too. Maybe Newport and the Gen Zers are on to something. Fall may be busy, and it may be an uncomfortable shift, but perhaps it doesn’t have to be a meaningless one. Perhaps I can wrest back a little control, shift things in subtle ways.

Maybe fall is just the shift I need to reaffirm my desires and my goals.

If everything is in tumult these days, why not use that unsettling to unsettle some of my complacency, some of my resignation?

What meaning can I find in all this?

Perhaps I need to reaffirm my desires. Perhaps all this shifting (which I find so uncomfortable) is a sign that I’m not in the right place, that something is off. Perhaps I need to recommit to a writing career; perhaps I need to remember what’s important and what’s peripheral; perhaps I need to dream a bit bigger and not give in to despair.

Maybe that’s the challenge of fall. As the weather cools and the days darken, as work piles up and up and up, the challenge is to not let it overwhelm you. The shift is happening beneath your feet and in the air and on your To Do list, but that shift doesn’t have to bury you.

Instead, weathering the shift is a kind of victory. Winter may be a time for rest and healing, but we feel that rest more deeply when we’ve gone through the wringer. The shifting of fall may be troublesome at times, but it can shake loose old ways of thinking; it can challenge us deeply, but facing those challenges can make us stronger.

I’m still annoyed by all the busyness of fall, but now I can sense that there’s an invitation happening too. I am invited to see the tumult as a crucible, as a shaking loose. I can shed old ways and discover new ones. I can let old frameworks die and resurrect deeper desires. I can also stumble and fall. That will happen too.

But it’s right there in the name. Fall.

In some ways it’s inevitable that this season will challenge me.

And yet, despite the challenges, I always manage to make it through.

I know it is not efficient or even very “productive” to write my notes by hand or write comments on student papers by hand, but every time I sit down to do my teaching work, I find myself drawn to writing things out with pen and paper.

Right now I’m reading through beginning-of-the-semester student surveys, and instead of recording the data on a Google doc or whatever, I find myself writing the notes on yellow legal pads, my trusty Pilot G-2 pen in my hand.

It’s definitely slower, doing it by hand. I’ll eventually type up some of this info and share the results with the class, so why waste my time handwriting it out first?

I asked myself the same question as I sat down to work, and I don’t know why, but I simply felt compelled to do it by hand. For some reason, this first go-round with the surveys feels like it should be done in analog. Read the surveys, write the answers on my legal pad, put the words down with my own pen strokes, hold the survey notecards in my hands, draw boxes and lines and asterisks on the paper.

When I think about doing the work straight onto the computer, something in me recoils. The work seems less pleasant. More drudgery.

But when I think about sitting at my desk, pen in hand, moving it quickly (or sometimes slowly) across the page, I feel good. I feel excited, energized, drawn to the materials. I want to begin my work.

I’m sure this is crazy. But it’s how I feel. And sitting down to do my teaching work can often be a struggle. I face a lot of internal resistance. Often, the only way I can overcome that resistance is to do the work by hand and tell myself there is no rush.

Of course, the volume of paperwork, of essays and reading journals and the like, means that taking things slowly means I spend hours at my desk. It means I don’t have time for other things.

This rankles me, of course, because I don’t want to spend all my time doing job-related work, but I also find that it’s the only way I can compel myself to do the work in the first place. The computer promises speed, but I rebel against the experience of using it. On some level, it unmoors me. And thus a conundrum arises: do the work “faster” but less pleasurably on the computer, feel more resistance and spend more time procrastinating OR do the work slower by hand, feel less resistance (even eagerness) and spend more time actually doing the work.

Either way, I probably spend more time than I’d like doing work for my job.

I’m simply a slow worker. Slow thinker, slow worker. But this slowness is a benefit. My work is better, and even more importantly, more pleasurable.

For now, I’m going to take it slowly. I’m going to record these survey answers by hand. I’m going to use this time to connect to my students’ answers, and when I type up some to share with the whole class, I’ll have a chance to re-encounter the data by going through it a second time. Maybe I’ll have new insights. Maybe the information will sink in more deeply. Maybe this typing up phase will give me another chance to contemplate my students’ answers.

It’s madness, but it’s the only way of working that makes sense to me.

Go slow. Write by hand. Mull it over. Spend time with it. No rush.

It’s the method that gets me to the desk to work. And that’s what counts.