The First of Fall.

Today is the first day of fall. The Autumnal Equinox. It doesn’t really feel like it, though. Despite sunset now being in the 6:00 hour, the next four days here in Maine have forecasted highs in the 80s, which is utterly bizarre. Global warming, man! I get that it’s bad but I’m sort of relishing its benefits all the same.

Anywho, Summer always seems to slip by with little to no time to sit down and write about it. But that’s just the way I approach blogging in general, it seems. I had (and still have?) intentions to write about my travels in Europe, but it just seems not to have happened yet. Also, I gave my personal laptop to my baby brother for college (you’re welcome, Jonny!) which lends an additional excuse/layer of inconvenience to getting the time to write. It was my goal to write twenty blog posts in 2017 and including this one I’ve posted ten. I’ve got three months left of the year...we’ll see what happens. 

At the beginning of September I made a list of goals for the month, which is something that I often do at the beginning of months. I stick it up on the mirror on the back of my bedroom door so that as I look at myself every morning I’m reminded of what I wanted to achieve for the month. It’s had mixed results so far but I’m totally “a person who makes lists” so I keep doing it anyway.

Here’s the list I made for the month of September:

1. Read three books
1. All Our Wrong Todays
2. The Moth Presents: All These Wonders
3. (Currently reading Braving the Wilderness)
2. Write three blog posts
1. (See what I did here?)
2. Also already wrote one about the first few days of my European adventure
3. Practice Passenger Seat (I’m trying to learn it on piano)
4. Make a pie or two or three
5. Climb a mountain
6. Get a haircut
7. Run at least 3 times a week
8. Go to church
9. Draw something
10. Take 7 pictures and get film developed
    
    

I typically only put about five goals on my list for the month. This one may have been a bit overambitious. I've gotten some done though. For instance, I climbed Double Top Mountain in Baxter State Park. (Although I technically made these goals after I did that, so the intent was to climb another mountain...maybe that'll happen.) Here's a panoramic photo I took at the top!

And this is a picture of my legs on one of my three runs this week. (This goal was not successful though because there was totally a weeklong span where I didn't run at all. Whoops.)

And this is the book that I spent alllll of August and a fair bit of September reading. Which makes it seem like it wasn't good, but it was actually really good and fairly quick reading when I actually got the chance to sit down and read. I just didn't make time to do that very often.

Clearly I have some serious work to do in the next week if I’m going to get it together and get these done. And I probably won’t. But that’s okay- the point in this exercise, I feel, is not really to get more done, although that is definitely still a desired outcome. Rather, the point is to be more mindful. Be aware of passing time, of things that I could get done over the course of thirty-ish days and understand that if I want them to happen I need to make moves toward them. The point is to savor my life a little more. Again, mixed results with this. I also read once that people who have make clear goals for themselves feel more of a sense of fulfillment (or something like that…) so this is partly an exercise in goal setting for the sake of goal setting. (Don’t worry guys, I know I’m ridiculous and also don’t have a damn clue what I’m talking about or why I do the things I do half the time; you are not alone!)