Fall
I love fall. There's this sense of demise attached to it, but it also brings to mind a necessary completion of a natural cycle as well. Fall also evokes some of the strongest associations from my childhood, many of which have to do with my father. Watching football, going to open houses, seeing the leaves turn outside his house, Friday evenings spent watching X-Files, Millennium, and DS9, seeing the Shining alone for the first time alongside a cozy fire... these are all things that come to mind when I conjur up the last few months leading up to the end of the year. To me, fall has always been something dying, time dwindling down and therefore taking on a newfound sense of urgency. There's also a lot of associations with family and the holidays and Christmas has always been the apex of that climb; the first couple of months after the next year have always been a desperate, barren wasteland for me. I don't know, I think about all this stuff and I can't imagine a true existence without four seasons. For all my obessions with change and rebirth, as much as I complain about winter, I couldn't imagine being truly complete without it.

Lately, I've been hearing a lot of people voice a longing for a job and stability and family, and I have to admit, I'm starting to get drawn into it. I don't know if it's because I'm on my own or because I'm staring down the long end of this degree or if these are true feelings brought on by a newfound awareness of some sort of a biological clock, but I occasionally find myself "longing," the best word I have to describe it. As with most things in my life, there's a duality to my feelings that hamper me from ever being truly convinced of either side, so until one jumps out of its seat and starts flailing its arms to grab my attention, I continue to venture on with my established way of thinking. But I can identify some sort of important development here in the fact that I'm starting to open my eyes to the possibility. I've always maintained a gaping chasm between my current status and the thought of settling down. But then again, I'm not getting any younger...

I'm suprised by my failing need to perfectly articulate my feelings. As one point, I would've spent as much time polishing an entry like this as I would thinking it up, but now I just have this intense need to convey my feelings, using whatever means I have at my disposal.

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