19 | July | 2014 | Sourcerer

I’d ask you if you remember this song. God Shuffled His Feet was one of my favorite albums back in the day. I still have it, and still enjoy it as much as I ever did. If I ever get one of those fancy digital music thingys, I’ll download every track. The harmonica guy is crazy good in this version.

I’d tell you that the last six weeks of blogging has been the best period of my blogging career. (My blogging career is longer than the archives here indicate.) It’s been a magical summer, but it’s waning. My life follows the academic calendar, and in a month, the tide will rush in.

I’m interested to see what’s going to happen to these blogs from August-October. Nearly everyone involved with the day-to-day maintenance has serious, high-stakes offline commitments during those months. Basically, it’s time for us to be happy with the progress we’ve made and do whatever we must to get to January without losing a lot of ground.

I’d tell you my emotional life has always followed a similar rhythm. I’m prone to both depression and anxiety. Lots of causes for both, but in my case I believe the depression is physiological and the anxiety is learned. I think that because I manage the anxiety very well with coping skills, but there’s just no managing the depression. The depression is seasonal.

Supposedly, I live at the wrong latitude to be a candidate for Seasonal Affective Disorder, but the short days and the lack of sunlight really mess with me in the winter. Winter comes along with big holidays, which I also don’t deal well with. My real New Year is my birthday, which is in late August. After my birthday comes a long list of holidays, most of them a month apart or less, which entail obligations of time, money or both: Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year. January 2 is the second-happiest day of the year for me, because it’s the day all that stuff is over until my next birthday. The happiest day of the year is the day in early spring when I walk outside and notice all the leaves on the trees have popped out overnight, because that means the long days are returning soon. These blogs helped me though the winter blues last year. We’ll see if they work the same way this year.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you the lettering of the “C” key on my keyboard is worn completely away. That key is solid black. It’s because of all the links I’ve copied using the CTRL+C over the last eight months. I hope you find that as hilarious as I do.