loch raven

So, here's something new - my first non-college essay blog! Granted, I should really be getting started on the million and one notebook responses I have to do for AP English...but such is life.

First off, I want to put out a little disclaimer. There's nothing on this blog that will be philosophically groundbreaking, or extremely personal, or brilliantly innovative. Most likely, it'll be a big, disorganized mess of random thoughts and speculations. In other words, it'll reflect my life lately.

Now that you have that little tidbit safely stashed away, here we go.

This might sound pretty "hippie-dippy", as our dear AP Bio teacher so shudderingly calls anything slightly deep, but I've always felt like autumn is my spring. It's my time for rebirth, rejuvenation, and general reassessment of my life. I'd imagine this is how some people feel during springtime, the ideal period for new beginnings, when everything is green and fresh and about to bloom and all that good symbolic stuff. But that particular season doesn't really do anything for me. It's autumn that makes me take a big step back and take a good, hard look at my life and what's going on around me. It's autumn that makes me fall (...no pun intended) even more in love with nature and running and everything good in my life. It's autumn that allows me to finally work up the courage and confidence to do whatever it is I need to. And, especially as of late, that "it" is namely starting over. The stark physical beauty of autumn especially reinforces my thoughts on this issue, which has slowly budged its unwelcome way into my life. When I feel that harsh first bite of an almost-frost force fresh air into my lungs, or when I see the leaves not fading quietly into death but instead blooming into vibrant color as their season comes to a close, I start to think that fall itself was always intended to be more of a promising beginning than a bitter ending.

It's almost time for my personal autumn to start. And, for the first time in quite a few years, I think I'm ready.