these are very common.

The rain has been coming down all afternoon, and its warm and muggy and October. I’m waiting and waiting for fall, but its slow in arriving this year. It isn’t that I need the pumpkin lattes (I hate Starbucks) or the buckets of apples or even the warm sweaters and tights and boots. I need the air of regeneration. I need the re-start. When the heat and light of summer drop away, my inner slate feels wiped clean and very hopeful. I’m always planning things, big and small, although small more often than big, and now is the time for planning. I’m making list after list.

Here’s a list:

-green cabbage
-Kennebec potatoes
-radishes
-celery
-scarlet turnips
-red beets
-baby eggplants
-mixed sweet peppers
-red bok choy

Those are the vegetables in my refrigerator right now.

Here’s another list:

-read 11 books
-write 27 blog posts
-run half a marathon
-submit an essay

Those are my goals for the end of this year.

I had coffee with a friend this morning who asked me about what job I’d like to do next. If there wasn’t a matter of money, what would I choose to do? I can’t remember a time in my life when I answered that question with confidence. I struggle to find places that feel like home and jobs that feel like vocation. I wound up answering, Maybe I don’t have an answer because I honestly don’t care very much. I think that is partly true. I am value-driven in work, but not career-minded, meaning I care more about believing in my work than I care what the work is.

Or maybe I should cut the bullshit, face the terrifying facts, face my own fear and paralysis, and say, I want to be a writer. Whatever that means.

Maybe I say, I am a writer, and instead of jobs and careers, I talk about projects and collaborations and creative endeavors and ideas.

Maybe instead of what I want to be, I talk about who I want to be.

Life is important, individual lives are important, but they are also very common. I am trying to straddle that balance.