A popular tradition, at least here in the West, is to make resolutions around New Years with the hope that the changing of the calendar will help to bring changes in ones life. I have never been very good at making New Years resolutions, or resolute about keeping those that I have made. The end-of-the-year holidays are too chaotic to permit the quiet reflection that I require before I can do any serious thinking about the future.
It has instead become a pattern that I think deeply about such matters when I am on my late-summer vacation, which in current years has been spent down the cape at the end of August, prior to the beginning of the school year. The end of the summer and the beginning of school has been a much more meaningful time of transition than an arbitrarily-chosen cold day shortly after the Winter solstice (although of course it is also somewhat arbitrary) and the vacation gives me time to think.
This year my vacation was truncated by the passage of Hurricane Irene (a mere tropical storm by the time it reached us, but still more than sufficient to disrupt a vacation in a cottage whose elevation above sea level can be conveniently measured in inches). Instead of relaxing week followed by a leisurely trip home, it was a week of mounting tension as the storm approached, followed by a hurried departure, more than a day early, so we could get off Cape Cod before everyone else had the same idea and/or the bridges were closed. When we arrived home, things became more frantic as we prepared for the storm–moving all of the plants and other items off of the patio, rearranging the contents of the basement to get everything off of the floor and elevate the most important items to the second shelf or higher on the basement shelves, patching cracks in the basement to try to keep the water out, running to the store to buy milk and a UPS, searching for batteries, candles and matches, replacing parts of flashlights, and drawing water just in case.
The storm did not do much damage in our area (although other areas were far less fortunate) and in the end, after all of our preparations, it was little more than a severe thunderstorm for us. We emerged from the house, cleared the fallen limbs from the yard, replaced the plants and the propane grill on the patio, took a deep breath, and headed back to work, where I learned that the project that I had more or less expected to be working on for the next four years will not be funded.
And thus I am in mid-September without a clear plan for the year.
