New Beginnings

I love autumn.

I love the back to school season–mostly because I’m only one in the family who doesn’t go back to school every year. I love the smell of the fall, the nip in the air, the fruits and vegetables that reach their peak, the brilliant colors on the trees, the beginning of hockey season.

To me, autumn is more a season of new beginnings than the spring. School is starting, which for teachers means a new crop of students. For students, there are new schools, new friends, new challenges. For athletic teams, the promise of a winning season still looms large, and anything is possible.  Yes, leaves are dying and starting to fall off the trees, but that has its own beauty as well.

This fall, these feelings of new beginnings are particularly strong because my first book is on its way to publication. This brings plenty of new challenges–having to surrender my book baby to the publisher and accept that my editor knows much more than I do about this business, for one. Forcing myself to come out of my introverted shell to market my book is another. I have never been one to toot my own horn, and I am always my own harshest critic. Things are largely out of my hands, which is always hard for a control freak like me, but it’s good. It’s a new beginning I always hoped I’d experience, but never truly expected.

And so as the leaves start to turn and the arguing with my kid over homework begins, I will surrender myself to the the season and let all the new experiences take me where they will.

How do you feel about fall? New beginnings, or end of summer?