The Fall

I hate to be completely unoriginal, but I love the Fall.  It’s my favorite time of year.  Southern California doesn’t pull it off very well, but I can pretend.

As last Fall approached, I was overwhelmed with feelings of dread.  I was nervous about starting a PhD and worried I’d committed myself to working too much, but what I didn’t tell anyone was that I was stressed to death about money.

This Fall is so different.  I can do the PhD thing.  I can do the work thing. And I am so close to being out of debt.  I’m still anxious about a lot of things, but mostly just excited.

Here are some of the things I have to look forward to this Fall:

• Amazing classes. This is my last year of coursework, so I was torn between taking the classes I’m most interested in and the ones that will better prepare me for teaching or, more immediately, passing qualifying exams.  I went for the classes I was most interested in, which means I’ll spend my semester studying death, atheism, and democracy.  It’s a weird thing I do here.

• Two-day weekends. I’ve been working six days a week since the beginning of the year, and I am not a fan.  Really long hours I can handle, but never having a break, because you have to spend your only day off catching up on sleep and laundry and homework is wearing.  It makes me feel like I’m on a hamster wheel.  This semester is as crazy as ever, but I somehow managed to pull off two day weekends and I will be defending them with my life.

• I get to see Vampire Weekend at the Hollywood Bowl in September. I do love Vampire Weekend and I have always wanted to see a concert at the Hollywood Bowl.  I forget that I used to be a very big concert goer in higher school and college.  It’s a habit I accidentally dropped when I became broke and left my concert buddy in another state.  This is my first concert in more than a year.

• Meeting bloggers. First Alex and then Bri.  If you’re going to be in the area, please let me know, because I’d love to meet you.  We just had our Southern California VEDA Meetup yesterday (video here).

• I’m going to Washington in October for a wedding. Maybe Southern California doesn’t do Fall well, but the Northwest most certainly does.  I won’t be there for long, but I hope to get a chance to visit my undergrad, because there’s a reason all of their promotional pictures are taken in the Fall.  Seeing my oldest friend get married will be pretty cool too.

• Getting out of credit card debt. I am doing everything I possibly can to make this happen by the end of the year, but the weird thing is that I’m not just looking forward to the end date.  I’m looking forward to these last four months of going for the goal.  I know no one believes me, but there’s a part of this getting out of debt thing that is actually fun.  All the same, I can’t wait to be out: to have accomplished what is probably the hardest thing I have ever attempted and to have my money be my own again.

• Whatever magic comes my way. My blog tends toward the things not going the way I want them to, because those are the things that occupy my mind, the things I need to work out in writing.  But, my life on the whole is pretty damn awesome and I am both happy and incredibly optimistic about the future.  I’m trying to keep my eyes open, because sometimes I get too focused and miss things right in from of my face.  I hope that life keeps throwing me awesome things, and I’ll try to do my part and be bolder in taking them on.

Summer ends and Fall begins for me next week. As much as any of the above, I look forward to writing all about it here on my blog.  VEDA has been a welcome distraction this month, but writing is my thing.