It's been a while, hasn't it? I know. I'm inconstant as the sea.... Or something. Thing is, the end of summer is always hard. Bradbury talks about it in my favorite fall book, Something Wicked This Way Comes. He talks about how hard it is for boys to give up the freedom of summer for school. I'm a long way off from that kind of September, but now I think of the end of summer in a different way.
At the end of this summer I turned 50. No big deal, right? I mean 50 isn't so much different than 49. On September twentieth it was only a day older.
But that that was the day that I realized for the first time ever that I had now lived more than I will live. My future is shorter than my past.
The end of summer. The start of fall. Yeah, that means something different to me now. I don't have a book out, I don't have nearly enough books finished, I'm still working my day job.... If I sat down and thought about where I thought I'd be and compared it to where I am, it would be....
No, I think that's a bad plan.
Except. I do remember a conversation in college with one of my best friends about how our lives were about to be separate and how we didn't want that to happen. We dreamed of all of us living in a big house someday, where there'd be room for writing and painting and cooking, and kids and cats and books, and swords.....
It was a fantasy, because we were kids.
Except. That's right where I live now. In a big house with three of my best friends and all that other stuff. So if I have that, maybe I still have time for a book and that other stuff.
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