And so, just like that, another summer is behind us. Oh, the days are still plenty warm, and I anticipate good shorts-wearing weather for another month or so (although in this goofy state, it isn’t at all unusual to see people wearing shorts in the dead of January… and it gets pretty damn cold around here in the dead of January, just in case you didn’t know), but the open-furnace temperatures of late July are long gone and the nights are acquiring a bit of a bite. I’ve got that same feeling you have when you realize the emotional energy is spent and the party’s over, but the guests haven’t yet started to leave.

I long ago realized that I’m prone to fits of melancholy and that they are often disconcerting to others, especially when I let my feelings show here on the blog, so I’m trying very hard not to let the shorter days and weakening sunlight depress me. But it’s tough. As much as I love the fall season and look forward to slipping into my old leather jacket and scuffing my way through a drift of fallen leaves, I mourn the end of a summer that never really seemed to get started for me. I can’t help but look at the last three or four months (depending on how you define summer) as wasted potential. One more summer in which I didn’t make it back to Europe (Vegas doesn’t compare, sadly), lose 30 pounds, or write a novel. I didn’t dine out on the patio of my favorite restaurant this year, or drive the Fruit Highway during prime picking season, or take The Girlfriend on a picnic. I didn’t see most of the big summertime movie blockbusters, and I didn’t get to the drive-in theater this year like I’ve promising Anne we would for, oh, five years or so. I didn’t sit on my back deck admiring a sunset with a glass of whiskey and a good cigar in my hands. I didn’t blog about all the interesting items that caught my attention for a few brief moments and then slipped past. Hell, I haven’t even gotten around to putting away all the stuff I moved into the living room after my basement flooded, and that happened clear back in February.

Part of the problem may be that I’ve never quite let go of the sense of time you have as a kid, when your year is divided into discrete blocks with very different purposes and textures: school, which was further sub-divided into semesters and/or quarters, and summer break, with its unscheduled freedom. I’ve been out of college for fourteen years now, and I’ll be going to my 20th high-school reunion next summer (assuming someone bothers to organize one), but every year at this time I still find myself getting antsy, feeling like I’ve got somewhere to be and that I’ve got to start making plans, buying supplies and new clothes, getting ready… except that I’ve got nothing to get ready for, not anymore. I work for a living now, day in and day out, five days a week with two off for good behavior, and the time of year has nothing to do with this unceasing rotation. The weeks run together and summer may as well be winter for all the difference it makes. It isn’t just summertime that’s gotten away from me; it’s time in general. And yes, I’m depressed about it. Is it really possible that there was once a moment in my life when afternoons lasted longer than the blink of an eye, and something a month in the future felt like it was an eternity away?