Seasonal Affect

Walking through the park this morning it was overcast and cool and I looked foward to the cold, pelting rains of autumn. When I was a kid I'd get an awful knot in my stomach and feel a panic-y tension as I sensed the end of the summer and the approach of another school year. Towards the middle of May I'd feel the summer coming on and I'd feel a different kind of anxiety and worry at the prospect of two and a half months of heat, humidity, unstructured monotony, and the dread of school starting again. But I did like those parts of spring and fall when it was cool and you'd be sitting in a classroom and it would be raining like crazy, beating against the windows like Nature was coming to wash away all these hang-ups and limitations and places I didn't belong. I remember during the fall of my first semester of college spending a lot of time in the woods crouching and listening to the rain plip plip plip against the leaves and my umbrella or the hood of my rain jacket. It always felt more comforting to be doing that then to be sitting in a building without any clue as to what I was doing there or where I was headed. Sometimes I think "sucessful" people have no idea what life is like for those that haven't made it. I realize that it isn't necessarilly so, but some people seem so glib or self-satisfied with their position.

I'm digressing and losing interest at the same time.