Autumn

I've met a lot of Australians whose favourite season is autumn. Here in Victoria, the weather doesn't seem to be as variable in autumn. It settles down into the 20s centigrade, after a summer of flying way up into the 30s and 40s and then way down into the 10s. The days are slowly getting shorter: we wake up before dawn again. But the afternoons are full of long golden sunshine.

Autumn is here. My semester started last week. I'm teaching one class by obligation, five hours in front of students, and one class by choice, as I'm trying to get notes polished into a book for graduate students. That's three additional hours in front of students, and hopefully three to five hours writing. My calendar has turned a pretty solid orange: the colour of work obligations.


It's a little harder to begin the semester with Tim in California. I also had someone visiting for work last week who wanted to talk about research projects, along with the new teaching obligations, so there ended up not being enough time for everything. It was one of those weeks in which I repeatedly dropped balls at home and at work. But having a weekend helps. The visitor is gone. The bathrooms are clean. The last load of laundry is in the machine. There is food in the fridge and we are ready for another week.

I read an article recently about how much we celebrate busy-ness, and how we compete with family and friends to sound the most stressed out. And how it isn't healthy. So I've been trying to mentally put a little more positive spin on my busy-ness. Sure the calendar is solid orange, but I chose those orange things. No, I can't do everything. But the things I'm doing are things that are fun and cool and make me happy.

Mostly.

But yeah, it will be a little rough settling into the new semester.