It snuck up on me all of a sudden, but it’s starting to look like Autumn where I live. Leaves starting to fall, the light of the sun looks different, it feels like Summer is quickly coming to its end. I made a drive across the river into Kentucky this evening, and the whole way it either looked like late-September, or mid-October depending on if the rain had caught up to me or not. On the one hand, one step closer to the heat being gone, but on the other, where’s the time gone? It might be the looming specter of schools starting back soon, or already started in some places, but it feels like Summer is running out, that it’s about time to head back into the pipe for the next nine months. It shouldn’t bother me, and I’ve written on it before, because I’ve been out of school for 16 years, out of college for ten, but, it feels kind of melancholic to me. In my mind it feels like I’m the one going back, when no, I don’t. I just have work to worry about. And it’s Friday night right now, which does a number on my psyche anyway because it’s when I can finally let myself relax, let myself breathe after the week that’s been. But around this time of year just a has a certain look to it, like the light hits the world in just a way that makes me feel this way. The evening light is this certain kind of golden, the shadows of the evening make it feel wistful when it’s about dark outside, it just feels like this moment you want to bottle and hold onto, even though I know I can’t. It’s like you want to hold onto every second of summer while it’s still here, because when it’s gone, it’s gone. There’s probably a metaphor for life in general there, but I’m kind of a dumb caveman and can’t wrench that out of my head. I know that nostalgia is a dangerous thing, but it’s evenings like this one that make me nostalgic for that time where it would be a running clock until I went back to the factory of sadness. When I didn’t have nearly the responsibility I do now, still had the stamina to pull all-nighters without a second thought. There was a time where I’d push myself to stay up until 6am to wring every drop I could out of the Summer, and a part of me looks back and wonders how I did it. I’m a morning person out of necessity now, I wake up when I used to go to bed, making it to midnight is an achievement now. It’d take a conga line of energy drinks to push me through an all-nighter, like it did when I’d go keep my mom company when she worked the front desk of a hotel overnight. By the time 7am rolled around I was a corpse. But, I’d much rather be in the position I am now, have the ability to do what I want to do, get out and go on my own terms, make my own money, all those things I take for granted. This time of year isn’t a ticking clock anymore, I can enjoy a late-summer evening without the sword of Damocles over my head, relax on a Friday night knowing I have the whole weekend ahead of me. If I want to make a grocery run, I can just do that, I have plans to take garbage to the dump tomorrow morning, I can just load up the truck and go when I wake up and get some caffeine down. I am the adult, I don’t have to wait for one to drive me. I love the fall, (parts of) winter, and I will be happy to see the summer end, but I do feel bad when it does. Because it feels like I’ve wasted my summer doing nothing, even when I’ve been constantly busy like I have this summer. I’ve done a lot of cleaning, rearranging, landscaping, etcetera, over the spring and summer this year, I can see what my time has been spent on, but the worry that I’m running out of time is still there. I’m not, I’ve done everything I planned to this summer, we’ve cleaned up the property, the garage, rented dumpsters, the shed is far less cluttered, I only have one closet left to attack, all the outdoor projects I can do are done. Everything else can be done anytime because it’s inside work. I don’t think I’m ready to see it end though, I don’t think I’m ready to see another summer slip away, even though I’ve utilized my time well for a change. Fall means baseball season is over, means my beleaguered Reds disperse for the winter, because the number of times they’ve made the playoffs in my lifetime tells me that October isn’t baseball time. Or maybe it’s just that I want to be able to go outside without freezing. An Ohio winter is many things, cold and miserable chief among them. But to probably start tying this mess together, this time of year, the look of the world around me this evening, it made me both nostalgic for another time, and wistful that the summer is going to start winding down soon. It made me think about half a lifetime ago, made me think about the days I’d try to hold onto for dear life, the rainy evenings between college classes or driving home, the days I can’t ever get back, no mater how much I want to get them. I can’t change the past, un-waste those days, be in the moment on those rainy evenings in the library, or walking from campus to Kroger for a donut and an energy drink. But I can look forward to another day. Try to make the next one I’ll want to remember if I can. Maybe one day when I’m old(er) and grey(er), I’ll look back on the summer of ’26 the way I look back at the summer of ’06, or the fall of ’13. Maybe it’ll live in my memory as the days I want to go back to, and the only way to do that is to keep pushing forward, keep doing things that I’ll find worth remembering one day. I’ve had enough days and years I’d like to forget, even if some of those days were kind of nice. Instead of being nostalgic now, I’d like to push that nostalgia until way down the line, and make future me nostalgic for what I did now instead of what I did way back when.